Dream Seesaw & the Spirit Lance of Genghis Khan

I am teaching at the Esalen Institute in California, and I have been given a bedroom overlooking the Pacific Ocean. As I lie in bed, I enjoy the sound of the breakers on the rocks below. I slip into a dream in which I am arriving at Ulan Bator in Mongolia. I have been invited to speak at a conference on shamanism, and members of a welcoming committee are thereto greet me with warm smiles.

 I rouse from the dream, delighting again in the sound of the waves. I briefly reflect that my dream could be a glimpse of a possible future, since I have received invitations to shamanic conferences in Mongolia in the past. My breathing follows the rhythms of the waves. I am back in the sea of dreams. I am in Mongolia again, but out in a wild landscape in an earlier era, the 1930s. I am involved in a grand Indiana Jones-style adventure involving a magical object the Nazis are seeking. 

I stir from this dream, and again hear the waves. Was I watching a movie just then? No. I am pulled back into 1930s Mongolia by a force that seems as strong as a Pacific undertow. I am there, in a bitter winter, where mounted soldiers are drinking blood from their horse’s necks to survive. I am in a different body, and have dual consciousness within it, as Robert and as the man who is trying to stop the Nazi tomb robbers. I know now what they are seeking. It is the spirit lance of Genghis Khan. People believe that this object has immense power, like a shamanic weapon of mass destruction. 

While I am fully engaged in this drama ,I am also aware of what is going on at the airport in a possible future. And I can hear, distinctly, the ocean sounds on a warm evening in California. The seesaw effect has changed. I am now aware of all three situations simultaneously, and have an overview of all of them. My focus on one situation will blur a little as I give full attention to one of the scenes, but my perception is never altogether lost.

 I spent the whole night like this, with pauses to record details.

Clearly the night had given me research assignments. I had never heard of the spirit lance of Genghis Khan. I found Jack Weatherford’s biography of Genghis Khan, and there it was, on page one. I read that Genghis Khan is a godlike figure for some shamanic lineages in Mongolia and that his power was held to have been preserved in his spirit lance, adorned with black horsehair. The burial place of this magical object was kept secret in a forbidden zone in Inner Mongolia. In the 1930s, there was a race to find it. It vanished, reportedly after being carried to Ulan Bator by armed monks – it vanished.

Oh yes. On my return home from California I received an invitation to a shamanic conference in Mongolia. I had too much going n in my calendar to accept, in ordinary realty. But since my dream self went, maybe a parallel Robert did also.

- This is my journal report of oneiric adventures before the pandemic. My drawing is from a visitation by a Mongolian warrior shaman on another night, in that drifty space between sleep and awake. I have often dreamed of Central Asia. 

What was going on that night at Esalen could be termed "seesaw" dreaming. You are pulled back and forth between different dream situations. You may be participant or observer, or both, in each of these scenarios. You may have the impression that the action is playing simultaneously, in two or more locations. I am interested in all forms of multiple dreaming, in which we may mange to be present in consciousness in two or more places at the same time. 

 

Your dreams may be glimpses of continuous lives you are leading somewhere else

What is going on in your dreams doesn't necessarily stop when you wake up or switch to a different screen. The action may play on, like episodes in a television series that continue to run after you turn off the set.
It gets more interesting. In dreams, you may check in to a parallel life you are leading somewhere else.
You may be swimming with seals, or looking for the selkie skin that was hidden from you. You might still be living with your ex, doing the things you would be doing if you had never broken up. You might be marching with those warriors in leather armor under the banner of a Bear Goddess. You might be running that bordello in the French Quarter in old New Orleans. You may be up on a high roof top, looking down on your present life in the perspective of the Double on the Balcony, your eternal witness.
When you exit a scene in a life you are leading somewhere else, you may or may not remember where you were and who you are in that other world. When you do remember, you tag what lingers in your mind as a dream.
When you exit a dream that is also a visit to a parallel life, your parallel self continues on its way. While you go about your day, your other self may dream of you.
Jung struggled for clarity on this, and found it late in life. He came to believe that we lead continuous lives in our dreams. Put another way, your dream may be a glimpse of a continuous life you are living somewhere else, a life that goes on whether or not you are tuned to its channel. This is something you can dream on.
You get up in the middle of the night and go the bathroom. When you return to bed, you find the same dream is playing as you were dreaming before, but the action has moved along. A bathroom break may be the start of your awakening.
Sometimes a dream of this kind reaches to you from another realm like a giant fist, pulling you in and back. It was like that for me one night at Big Sur. I was in a bed overlooking the Pacific Ocean, my window open to catch the sea breeze and the marvelous rhythm of the waves breaking on the rocky shore.
In my dreams, I was far away, in Mongolia in a cruel winter, on the eve of World War II. I was engaged in a secret mission, to spy on a team of SS commandos who were seeking to capture the most powerful shamanic artifact in the Central Asia: the spirit banner of Genghis Khan. I stirred from this dream, thrilled and mystified. I might have made it my plan to reenter the dream to try to understand why I was in Mongolia in the 1930s while my body was on the California coast. But no effort on my part was required - unless I had wanted to resist going back.
Again and again, through the whole night, the drama played on. All my senses were engaged. Now in a dual or multiple state of consciousness, I could hear the Pacific breakers and turn my body on the bed, while fully present in the Mongolian adventure in a body that felt no less real. I could taste the blood from a horse's neck I was required to drink in order to survive that terrible winter, in a wilderness of snow. I could smell the rank fear of horses and men. I have no doubt I was there.

Art: René Magritte, "Faraway Looks" (1927)

Your dream may be a glimpse of a continuous life you are leading elsewhere

What is going on in your dreams doesn't necessarily stop when you wake up or switch to a different screen. The action may play on, like episodes in a television series that continue to run after you turn off the set.

It gets more interesting. In dreams, you may check in to a parallel life you are leading somewhere else.

You may be swimming with seals, or looking for the selkie skin that was hidden from you. You might still be living with your ex, doing the things you would be doing if you had never broken up. You might be marching with those warriors in leather armor under the banner of a Bear Goddess. You might be running that bordello in the French Quarter in old New Orleans. You may be up on a high roof top, looking down on your present life in the perspective of the Double on the Balcony, your eternal witness.

When you exit a scene in a life you are leading somewhere else, you may or may not remember where you were and who you are in that other world. When you do remember, you tag what lingers in your mind as a dream.

When you exit a dream that is also a visit to a parallel life, your parallel self continues on its way. While you go about your day, your other self may dream of you.

Jung struggled for clarity on this, and found it late in life. He came to believe that we lead continuous lives in our dreams. Put another way, your dream may be a glimpse of a continuous life you are living somewhere else, a life that goes on whether or not you are tuned to its channel. This is something you can dream on.

You get up in the middle of the night and go the bathroom. When you return to bed, you find the same dream is playing as you were dreaming before, but the action has moved along. A bathroom break may be the start of your awakening.

Sometimes a dream of this kind reaches to you from another realm like a giant fist, pulling you in and back. It was like that for me one night at Big Sur. I was in a bed overlooking the Pacific Ocean, my window open to catch the sea breeze and the marvelous rhythm of the waves breaking on the rocky shore.

In my dreams, I was far away, in Mongolia in a cruel winter, on the eve of World War II. I was engaged in a secret mission, to spy on a team of SS commandos who were seeking to capture the most powerful shamanic artifact in the Central Asia: the spirit banner of Genghis Khan. I stirred from this dream, thrilled and mystified. I might have made it my plan to reenter the dream to try to understand why I was in Mongolia in the 1930s while my body was on the California coast. But no effort on my part was required - unless I had wanted to resist going back.

Again and again, through the whole night, the drama played on. All my senses were engaged. Now in a dual or multiple state of consciousness, I could hear the Pacific breakers and turn my body on the bed, while fully present in the Mongolian adventure in a body that felt no less real. I could taste the blood from a horse's neck I was required to drink in order to survive that terrible winter, in a wilderness of snow. I could smell the rank fear of horses and men. I have no doubt I was there.

Art: René Magritte, "Faraway Looks" (1927)

Mongol shaman's power suit

A tremendous dark figure with a helmet-hat and a long heavy flared coat of animal skins and furs, hung with metal charms and mirrors and weapons, and high fur-lined boots. He is facing me, but the sourceless light is behind him so I don’t see his features clearly. He is more of a silhouette, red-black.
    I feel a great wind stirring across distant plains. His landscape, his storm, his wind of soul. I am excited that a window between us has opened. He is looking in at me from across time and dimensions. I think of Genghis Khan, the shaman warrior who made an empire, a monster in the memory and jokes of the West, but a hero and exemplar in Mongolia.
    There is a link between me and this warrior shaman who stands at a threshold between our worlds. There are times when I have been on the other side of that opening, in a different body, and worn an outfit like that. I feel a mute invitation to join this figure now. Maybe we are both avatars of a central self. If I can join him in his world, can our energies work together in mine? What would than mean?

All these thoughts and feelings stream through me as I contemplate the figure between the worlds. It is an absolutely spontaneous vision. I did not set an intention for my night dreams, and my body was fast asleep when this figure appeared. When I woke from this dream at 1:00 a.m., after two hours sleep, I was charged with excitement.
     My mind ranged over earlier adventures in which I have found myself in the world of shamans and khans of Central Asia. When I was a boy in high school, my visions of an ancient warlord of China led me to write a whole cycle of poems. In a dream from a couple of years ago, I found myself in the body and perspective of a man in clothes like this, seated at the edge of a precipice watching a battle unfold in a great plain below, sending out his instructions mentally more than by couriers.
     The memory that rises up strongest now is from the early summer of 1988, when I was studying shamanism and trying to make sense of a series of psychospiritual storms and trans-temporal dramas that were pushing me towards reinventing my life and my work. In this dream, I visit a tailor and a fancy men's clothing store, looking for a new suit. I decide to try on a pinstriped “power suit” but as I feel the fabric I discover it is made of skins and furs, and is hung with metal charms. I look at the label and see that it reads“Shamanic”.

Action: Watch again the excellent film "Mongol", with Tadanobu Asana cast as Temudjin, the young Genghis Khan. We see the ordeals of the young Mongol's life, his shamanic relationship with the wolf, and his reverence for the sky god Tengri.
    Oh, yes. I will avoid any tendency to act like Genghis Khan! Except in showing respect for the religions of all peoples (he studied all religions and decreed religious tolerance in his empire) and for the spirits of earth and sky.

"Genghis Khan at the threshold between the worlds". Drawing by Robert Moss. January 10, 2013.