The science of dream travel is ancient: in the evolution of our
species, it probably predates speech and may have helped to generate language.
Dream travel has a fascinating pedigree.
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 other 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 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 “real” than ordinary reality and may be more so.
For the Jivaro people of
South America, everyday life is regarded as “false.” “It is firmly believed
the truth about causality is to be found by entering the supernatural world, or
what the Jivaro view as the ‘real’ 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.”
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.
Shamans ride their drums to the Upper, Middle 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.
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 —
who once had a fearsome reputation as pirates —
still journey to the spirits for guidance on the right trees and natural materials to use in the construction of their prahus as well as on their ocean crossings.
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.
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.
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 — or special powers —
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, is described as journeying
outside the body while its owner sleeps. It knows pleasure and pain, just as in
waking life. It travels on “fine roads” through zones that correspond to the senses, the
wind, the ether, toward the higher realms of spirit.
Shankaracharya, the ascetic exponent of Advaita Vedanta,
practiced soul-flight and the projection of consciousness to another body.
Challenged to a debate on sex —
a subject of which he was woefully ignorant at the time —
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.
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 is Carlo Ginzburg’s The Night Battles, a monograph on the Benandanti, or “good-farers” of the Friuli region, who journeyed to defend the
health of the community and the crops.
Soul journeying is also central to Christian spirituality. In II
Corinthians, Paul refers to his own soul journey when he speaks of “a man who was caught up into the third heaven,
whether in the body or out of the body I know not.”
Saint Columba, the founder of the great monastery at Iona, regularly traveled
outside his body to scout developments at a distance.
Saint 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.
In Jewish tradition, the story of Elijah’s
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) was the chanting and correct
vibration of sacred texts. Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534–72)
recited phrases from the Zohar over
and over, as Eastern meditators use their mantras. He entered an altered state
in which he received visitations from spiritual teachers — notably Elijah —
and could travel freely outside the body, to visit “heavenly
academies.”
Soul-flight is not an art reserved for yogis, mystics, and
shamans. The projection of consciousness by “remote
viewing” or “
traveling clairvoyance” 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,
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.
One of the most famous soul journeyers in European history was
the Swedish scientist Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772),
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..
It is not surprising that the dream explorer who coined the term lucid dreaming was another soul
journeyer. Dr. Frederik van Eeden (1860–1932)
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 “lucid dreams”
in which the dreamer retains the memory of his waking life, remained conscious,
and could carry out “different acts of free
volition.” He observed that the
phenomenon of multiple consciousness and “double
memory” —
of both waking and dream events —
“leads almost unavoidably to the
conception of a dream-body.” He later wrote a novel, The Bride of Dreams, about dream travel outside the body.
Frequent flier Robert Monroe asserted with reason that “a controlled out-of-body experience is the most
efficient means we know to gather Knowns to create a Different Overview” — a new definition of
reality.
Text adapted from Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination and Life beyond Death by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.
Drawing: "Storm Bird Carries Me Home" by Robert Moss
