{"id":5894,"date":"2015-04-21T12:09:30","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T16:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/?p=5894"},"modified":"2015-04-21T12:09:31","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T16:09:31","slug":"a-short-history-of-soul-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2015\/04\/a-short-history-of-soul-flight.html","title":{"rendered":"A short history of soul flight"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Marc<\/a>
Marc Chagall flies with Bella over Vitebsk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In many human cultures the most profound insights into the nature of the divine and the fate of the soul after physical death have been attributed to ecstatic journeys beyond the body in waking dream or vision. In most human cultures, the existence of parallel worlds inhabited by gods, daimons, and spirits of the departed has been accepted as simple fact, a fact of extraordinary importance. Visiting these other worlds was a top priority for our ancestors, as it still is wherever there is living<\/i> spirituality. From the travel reports of the boldest and most successful journeyers between the worlds, mythologies and religions are born. Soul journeying was understood to be the key to orders of reality, hidden from the five physical senses, that are no less \u201creal\u201d than ordinary reality and may be more<\/i> so.<\/p>\n

For the Jivaro people of South America, everyday life is regarded as \u201cfalse.\u201d \u201cIt is firmly believed the truth about causality is to be found by entering the supernatural world, or what the Jivaro view as the \u2018real\u2019 world, for they feel that the events which take place within it are the basis for many of the surface manifestation and mysteries of daily life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among dreaming peoples, the reality of the soul journey and the objective, factual nature of the travelogues brought back are not in doubt. The travel reports will be compared with those of previous explorers.<\/p>\n

Shamans ride their drums to the Upper and Lower Worlds to gain access to sources of insight and healing, to commune with the spirits and rescue lost souls. Aboriginal spirit men journey to the Sky World, climbing a magic cord projected from their own energy bodies, at the solar plexus or the tip of the penis.<\/p>\n

Before compass and sextant, before charts, the great open-sea navigators guided their shipmates across the oceans by fine attunement to the patterns of waves and wind and stars and by the ability to scout ahead and consult a spiritual pilot through dream travel. Traditional navigators in the Indian Ocean reputedly had the power to travel ahead of their vessels in the form of seabirds or flying fish to set a safe course. The shipmakers and sea captains of the Bugis of Sulawesi \u2014 who once had a fearsome reputation as pirates \u2014 still materials to use in the construction of their prahus<\/i> as well as on their ocean crossings.<\/p>\n

The ancient Taoist masters were known as the feathered sages because of their reputed power of flight, which sometimes involved shape-shifting into the form of cranes.<\/p>\n

In ancient Greece, shaman-philosophers were renowned for their ability to travel outside the body, appear in two or more locations at the same time, and commune with their colleagues. The Pythagoreans taught and practiced soul travel and believed that spiritual masters born centuries apart could communicate by this means.<\/p>\n

The ability to project consciousness beyond the physical body, to fold space-time, influence events at a distance, and project a double are all recognized siddhis<\/i> \u2014 or special powers \u2014 of advanced spiritual practitioners in Eastern traditions. Vedic literature from India is full of vivid accounts of soul-flight by humans and beings-other-than-human. In the Mahabharata, the dream-soul, or suksma atman<\/i>, is described as journeying outside the body while its owner sleeps. It knows pleasure and pain, just as in waking life. It travels on \u201cfine roads\u201d through zones that correspond to the senses, the wind, the ether, toward the higher realms of spirit.<\/p>\n

Shankaracharya, the ascetic exponent of Advaita Vedanta, practiced soul-flight and the projection of consciousness to another body. Challenged to a debate on sex \u2014 a subject of which he was woefully ignorant at the time \u2014 he is said to have left his body in a cave under the guard of his followers while he borrowed the body of a dying king, whose courtesans schooled him in all the arts of the Kama Sutra.<\/p>\n

Soul travel was well understood in the Sacred Earth traditions of Europe, from the earliest times until the murderous repression associated with the witch craze. One of the most fascinating accounts \u2014 less reliant than most on confession extracted under torture \u2014 is Carlo Ginzberg\u2019s monograph on the Benandanti, or \u201cgood-farers\u201d of the Friuli region, who journeyed to defend the health of the community and the crops.<\/p>\n

Soul journeying is also central to Christian spirituality. In II Corinthians, Paul refers to his own soul journey when he speaks of \u201ca man who was caught up into the third heaven, whether in the body or out of the body I know not.\u201d St. Columba, the founder of the great monastery at Iona, regularly traveled outside his body to scout developments at a distance.<\/p>\n

St Anthony of Padua was renowned for his ability to travel outside the body and appear in two places at once. There are reports of him preaching in two churches at the same time.<\/p>\n

In Jewish tradition, the story of Elijah\u2019s chariot of fire is the model for visionary ascent to higher realms. Among the Kabbalists, soul-flight to the higher planes was held to be the reward for long years of study and solitary meditation. A key element in Kabbalist meditation (hitboded<\/i>) was the chanting and correct vibration of sacred texts. Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534\u201372) recited phrases from the Zohar<\/i> over and over, as Eastern meditators use their mantras. He entered and altered state in which he received visitations from spiritual teachers \u2014 notably Elijah \u2014 and could travel freely outside the body, to visit \u201cheavenly academies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soul-flight is not an art reserved for yogis, mystics, and shamans. The projection of consciousness by \u201cremote viewing\u201d or \u201c traveling clairvoyance\u201d has been central to the history of warfare. Go back through the old battle sagas and you will find tales of warrior shamans who shape-shifted to spy out enemy positions. The druid MacRoth, in the Irish epic the Tain<\/i>, performs this service for his royal patron, flying over the enemy ranks in the shape of a black warbird. Native American sorcerers were employed by both the French and the English to carry out similar scouts during the French and Indian War.<\/p>\n

One of the most famous soul journeyers in European history was the Swedish scientist Emanuel Swedenborg (1688\u20131772), the son of a Lutheran bishop. He was in his fifties when powerful visitations by the spirits transformed his life; he then embarked on repeated journeys into their realms. He encountered angels who escorted him on guided tours of many kinds of heavens and hells..<\/p>\n

It is not surprising that the dream explorer who coined the term lucid dreaming<\/i> was another soul journeyer. Dr. Frederik can Eeden (1860\u20131932) was a Dutch writer, physician, and member of the British Society for Psychical Research (SPR). In 1913, he gave a lecture to the SPR in which he reported \u201clucid dreams\u201d in which the dreamer retains the memory of his waking life, remained conscious, and could carry out \u201cdifferent acts of free volition.\u201d He observed that the phenomenon of multiple consciousness and \u201cdouble memory\u201d \u2014 of both waking and dream events \u2014 \u201cleads almost unavoidably to the conception of a dream-body<\/i>.\u201d He later wrote a novel, The Bride of Dreams<\/i>, about dream travel outside the body.<\/p>\n

Frequent flier Robert Monroe asserted with reason that \u201ca controlled out-of-body experience is the most efficient means we know to gather Knowns to create a Different Overview\u201d \u2014 a new definition of reality.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Adapted from Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination and Life Beyond Death<\/em><\/a> by Robert Moss. Published by New \"Dreamgates\"<\/a>World Library. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In many human cultures the most profound insights into the nature of the divine and the fate of the soul after physical death have been attributed to ecstatic journeys beyond the body in waking dream or vision. In most human cultures, the existence of parallel worlds inhabited by gods, daimons, and spirits of the departed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,78,38,10,20,7,31,22,42],"tags":[1715,83,1712,927,1473,1714,1713,925,211],"class_list":["post-5894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-active-dreaming","category-ancestral-traditions","category-ancient-religions","category-conscious-dreaming","category-history-of-dreaming","category-lucid-dreaming","category-multiverse","category-shamanic-dreaming","category-shamanism","tag-benandanti","tag-dream-travel","tag-jivaro","tag-obe","tag-robert-monroe","tag-shankaracharya","tag-siddhis","tag-soul-flight","tag-taoism"],"yoast_head":"\nA short history of soul flight - 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\/2015\/04\/a-short-history-of-soul-flight.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A short history of soul flight - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In many human cultures the most profound insights into the nature of the divine and the fate of the soul after physical death have been attributed to ecstatic journeys beyond the body in waking dream or vision. 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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\/5894","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=5894"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6211,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5894\/revisions\/6211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}