I'll read it in my dreams

 I am always surprised when people tell me that they cannot read in dreams. They may look at text or inscriptions, but then find that they cannot stabilize or recall what they were viewing. There are research studies supporting the notion that reading is not an oneiric ability.

    Such reports and studies bemuse me, because I read even more in dreams than in regular life, and often manage to bring back a good deal. Sometimes I am assisted by an inner voice that speaks the words as I read them. To recover more than a few scraps of a text, I am often required to go back inside a dream and re-read the whole thing. I typically do this in a state of relaxed attention, lying on the bed with a pad and pencil in hand, jotting down what I read as I go through the pages or panels in a state of conscious or lucid dreaming.
    I have difficulty with languages that I do not know, or do not know well, but again that inner voice is there to assist me. Once I read a ribbon-like scroll in Hebrew and was given the inner translation:

Fear is falling down, awe is standing up, in the presence of the powers.

I read this dream text in the midst of one of my shamanic retreats. A member of the gathering, who is both a physician and a Kabbalist, explained to me, when he heard my report, that in Hebrew the word yira [יראה] can mean either "fear" or "awe".
    Similarly, an inner voice will translate walls of hieroglyphs, tablets in cuneiform, parchments in Latin or Old English.
   The most profound spiritual dialogue of my life began when I re-entered a dream from which I had awakened, in cool moonlight, in a cabin by a lake in Vermont. In the dream, I had been lunching with a mysterious and elegant couple. As I left the scene, an old friend rushed up to remind me that I needed to record everything, and should look inside a large manila envelope for instructions.
   Lying on my bed, I sent my second self back into the restaurant. I opened the envelope and read a newsapaper cutting that announced that "The Prince and Princess of Fars Are Traveling Abroad". With the clipping was a list of 20 questions I was supposed to put to these visitors from the land of Rumi and Suhrawardi.
   I sat my second self down at the table and read the questions one by one. They were all about soul and its peregrinations. "What is the nature of exile?" I read. Next question: "What are the conditions for return?" The answers fill many pages of my journal.
    On another occasion, I dreamed I had received a telegram from my favorite dead professor. I brought back a couple of sentences. These were enough to take me back inside the dream, in my dream reentry, to capture the rest. The full contents of the telegram gave me beautiful postmortem reflections in a familiar voice on afterlife possibilities and the connections between personalities living in different times.
    Sometimes, in dreams, I read books by authors I know. Some of these are books that have been published in the regular world; others appear to be books that exist in another reality. I especially enjoy reading books of my own that I have not yet completed, or even embarked on, in ordinary reality. It's a grand trick for a writer, to be able to bring through pages of a book that already exists, in the Dream Library, and turn it into something that others can read, in the ordinary world.

Digital art: "Dream Library" by RM

In My Forgotten Library

It happens every few months. I pull aside a screen, or open a curtain, or reach into an obscure corner of a room, and open the door to a library wing of my house that is not so much secret as forgotten. This library is immense, with bookcases that rise to the ceiling, suffused with light that seems natural, though I see no windows. The nearest bookshelves at my left hand are filled with European history. I recall that last time I was here, I dipped into some books about John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough.

In the early hours this morning, I step into the library room again. It is as I remember it. However, the room from which I enter is different. With its deep green wallpaper, I think it belongs to my next residence, which we are currently renovating, rather than my present house. Lucid inside the dream, it strikes me that I have not gone to the far end of the library wing and should explore what is there. I am surprised to find several people working at a large table.

When one of them turns, I see he is my favorite dead professor. I had many encounters with him over the years since his death, often in a very special research institution. I am skeptical about whether he is really here now, in this time and place. He laughs and peels off a mask. As the goatee and bald pate and glinting spectacles are removed, I see that my helper has been wearing a familiar face. I’m not sure, but I suspect he is the young historian inside my own psyche. A large, comfy lady at the table seems quite solid. In her shapeless print dress, she’s not putting on any façade. Her name is Maureen, and she is available for research assignments. The third figure, male, is not introduced.

“What are you working on?”

“Parallel lives.”

Of course. A perennial theme. When I met my dead professor at a research institute twenty years ago, he showed me this was his main work. Not simply Parallel Lives as Plutarch wrote them, coupling biographies of prominent Greeks and Romans, but a branch of Metahistory: the study of how the dramas or people living in different times and places can turn on each other, shifting each other’s lives. Back them, my dead professor was studying the interaction between the lives of Lenin and an ancient tyrant. Dionysius of Syracuse. I wonder who will most reward my study now? Maybe Maureen can tell me.

- Unedited journal report, June 8, 2022

 

 

Bear in the Secret Library

I have a secret library in my house. It contains several rooms filled with rare and precious books, many of them beautifully bound, arranged on bookcases that rise to the ceiling.

     It's hard to believe, but I often forget the very existence of this amazing cache. Often I remember it only when I am thinking of moving. Then I am in a lather to make sure that I don't leave any of the most important books behind. This task is not straightforward, because now I must find the concealed entrance to the secret library. Things have to be moved to free the wall without a door that will swing open if I can remember how to work the hidden catch.

     I remember a night when it took me a while to move what needed to be moved and open the false wall. Then I was able to go down a broad, rather grand staircase. I was surprised and delighted to see something unexpected on the bottom step: a very large bearskin. As I descended to it, the bearskin rose up and became a huge brown bear. I was so happy to be with Bear. I hugged him and danced around with him.

    Then I noticed that the whole first room of the library was full of animals. At first they looked like taxidermy specimens, stiff and stuffed. In front of the fireplace, noses in the air, were two great dogs who once lived with me; I loved them fiercely. Elsewhere in the room, I saw a red fox, a wolf, a mountain lion, a stag, a moose. As I moved around the room, they all came alive and I found myself at a joyous reunion with a council of animal guardians.

    Libraries can hold more than books. In your dreams, as in mine, you may find yourself in possession of a secret library. Try to remember it tonight, and see what you may want to transfer from your dream life into your waking world: knowledge that has always belonged to you, on another level;a book you have not yet written but can now bring through; a renewed connection with your animal spirits.

Photo by RM.

Manifesting a cosmic man

I am in a magical library of the kind Jung would have loved, full of rare volumes of alchemy, mythology, ancient philosophy. I am in modern clothes, but I act like a Renaissance magus who actually knows what he is doing. I am engaged in the Great Work of creating a kind of Cosmic Man.
    He comes to life as a tall, well-built Caucasian man with fine red-gold hair and trimmed beard. His body is draped with planetary, elemental and zodiacal symbols, clustered especially over the upper torso and lower body. 
    Over his shoulder he wears a loose-flapping banner with the inscription, "Fortunate is he who is able to know the causes of things."

I woke happy and excited.
    I recognized the words on the banner. They are borrowed from Virgil's Georgics, Book 2, line 490. The original Latin is Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, literally "fortunate was he who was able to know the causes of things." I shall have to do some reentry work to recover all the symbols.
   The 19th century image (above) from Jaipur of Vishnu as Cosmic Man has a similar placement of symbols, though as human types the figures are very different. 

Meeting my boy authors in the Dead Poets' Library

One of the places I love to go for creative inspiration is a Secret Library. The books are alive; open any one and you are magically transported into the realm for which it is a record and a key. Some of the books fly around on their own when not leashed to a long table or placed inside the fine mesh of bird cages of exquisite design.
     This is a place of dead poets who are very much alive. I have had many encounters with W.B.Yeats in the Secret Library. I was reckless enough to describe some of these in detail in my Dreamers' Book of the Dead on the principle well stated by Mark Twain (who is also no stranger to these premises) that "I don't want to hear about the Moon from someone who hasn't been there."
     The doors to the Secret Library open in dream, and through memory, and are oiled by the practice of going there and bringing back gifts and doing something creative with those gifts. I wrote the last phrase a little nervously, because I am aware I have yet to fulfill assignments given to me by the fiercest of the mentors I have ever encountered in my Secret Library.

I go up the stones steps and through the glass doors on a fine spring day when the fruit trees are in flower and the street is full of cheerful bicyclists in bright colors. I nod to the Librarian. I notice an unusual stir of activity in the lobby and the main reading room. These spaces are crowded with people, some familiar. I see Yeats in the distance, and Tolkien and C.S. Lewis with their pipes and pots of beer, and RLS romantically attired in Scottish dress. I see Jung, with a flash of kingfisher blue in the field around his three-piece woolen suit; and the bard with the silver brooch; and Borges in the corner, with a jeweler’s glass.
    I would love to consult with all of them. I'm not going to waste a second questioning whether they are real figures or figments of my imagination, as long as they can give me some good stuff, maybe the makings of a new book.
    But three boys block my way, clamoring for my attention. I would guess their ages as six, nine and twelve. They are very familiar. I have seen them in family photo albums, and in dreams.
    "What do you want?"
    "We've been telling you," says the six-year-old.
    "We've told you again and again, in dream after dream," says the twelve-year-old.
    "And you wouldn't listen," says nine-year-old Robert. Did I really have that many freckles when I was nine?

 "I’m listening now," I tell them. "What do you want?"

“I want a train,” says Six.

“I want toy soldiers,” says Nine

“I want girls, but not the yucky kind, and Nazis to fight,” says Twelve.

“I want a Bear,” says Six.

“I want a Lion,” says Nine.

“I want an Eagle,” says Twelve.

“I want my father,” says Six.

“I want my sister,” says Nine.

“I want the Mage of the Purple Mountain,” says Twelve.

They tell me, as a chorus: “You should listen to us much more than you do. We are the ones who can help you write the best book you have ever written, the one that everyone will want to read."
     I'm listening now.

Dorothy Parker's seance to call the living

I was invited to a meeting at the Algonquin, a Manhattan hotel once famed for a mordantly witty literary circle where Dorothy Parker was one of the presiding spirits. I had not dined at the Algonquin since, years ago, a generous publisher put me up there in the midst of a whirlwind book tour. On that occasion, I was not impressed by the food. But then there are the literary ghosts.
     I confess I have yet to have a personal encounter with a ghost at the bar of the Algonquin (though I have felt a mischievous spirit in the elevator). However, the invitation reminded me of a woman writer who met Dorothy Parker, as she now is, under more interesting circumstances.
     During one of my weekend workshops, I suggested that participants might want to travel, with the aid of shamanic drumming, focused intention, and a minimalist map, to an interesting locale in the Imaginal Realm, a place I call the Dream Library. This is a place where you may be able to garner information and support on any theme that interests you. You can hobnob with famous writers of the past (if they are willing to schmooze with you) or consult a master in any field that interests you. You can also seek the help of the Librarian, who may or may not appear with a shadow that looks like a long-beaked bird.
     I have had many illuminating encounters in the Dream Library with dead writers, including W.B. Yeats. I share some of the story of my visits with Yeats in my Dreamer's Book of the Dead. I have never found it necessary to spend much time on questions like: Was that really Yeats (his spirit, on the Other Side or reaching across time)? Or some essence of his work and personality? Or the aspect of me that is like Yeats? Or a teacher beyond either of us, putting on a familiar face as a "contact picture"? It is enough for me to go with the material. If it provides useful leads that check out, or sends me into a riff of creative writing with good results, I am content with that.
      Anyway, back to Dorothy Parker of the Algonquin Circle.
      On her journey to the Dream Library, a woman writer in my group met Dorothy Parker, who appeared to be sipping a martini. The writer mastered her initial incredulity as Dorothy fired a series of witticisms reminiscent of notorious dicta like, "I don't care what's written about me so long as it isn't true."
      The writer, while trying to take mental notes fast enough to keep up, was inspired to ask Parker, "Did you hold seances when you were alive?"
      Quick as a thumb on a cigarette lighter, Dorothy replied, "We are holding a seance now. How do you think you got here?"
      Woo-hoooo. That puts an interesting spin on the question of what is going on in some of our dream encounters with the deceased.


We'll be making a group journey to the Dream Library during the five-day adventure in "Writing as a State of Conscious Dreaming" that I am leading at magical Mosswood Hollow, near Seattle, from April 16-20.

Trying to record in the night museum

I am delighted by the detailed reports dream travelers have brought back from a journey to a museum where they can find secrets from other lives and other times.

As they share their adventures, I am taking more care than usual to make notes in my travel journal. Although I am using a new ballpoint pen, the flow of ink is erratic. I shake it to try to improve the flow, then try writing letters again where previous efforts have left only indentations on the paper. When I press down hard, the results are worse than before. I try writing lightly, letting the tip of the pen just skim the paper. This works better.

I write and rewrite the title of the third journey report, stated clearly by a woman in the group as

LOUVRE MUSEUM

FAKE DOUBLE

By this, she appears to be saying that she went to an alternate Louvre museum, in the imaginal realm. She found that inside, it had double walls. She could step through any wall and find, an arm's length behind it, a second wall, behind which the real treasures were to be found.

She had a particular interest in a mystery of the American Civil War, involving "two lost names". She found the names. I duly recorded the first: "Orlando Orlando or William Orlando." I wrote down the second name also, but can't recall it write[*] now - since I woke to realize that I was doing all this recording inside my dream, not in a literal journal.

The dream content was quite typical of workshops I lead where a frequent and popular group exercise is to travel to a space like a library or museum where it is easy to find portals to other times, or speakers from those times. The literal-ness of the dream (in the context or how I spend my days) makes me feel that my dream self either (a) went ahead of me, across time, to lead a program I'll lead in ordinary reality in the future or (b) taught a workshop inside the Dreamtime, which would not be a novelty.

The trope of trying to record something inside a dream will be familiar to many dreamers. Sometimes we are quite convinced we have journaled everything - until we wake, to find the relevant page in the bedside notebook blank. Still, the physical-seeming effort of having to write over and over to get ink on the page did succeed in imprinting a few memories that remained in my waking brain.

* I'll leave the slip, on the principle that we want to notice what's showing through our slips. Clearly, a message for me is WRITE NOW.

Finding the green book in the tree library

Rhinebeck, New York

At the end of our first evening session in my workshop on Shamanic Lucid Dreaming at the Omega Institute last weekend, I gave the group one of my standard homeplay assignments: to approach the night with intention. I urged our dreamers to set a juicy intention: to go to a tropical paradise, to have dinner in Paris, to seek healing or life direction or a tryst with the perfect dream lover.

    The next morning, a lawyer in our circle was eager to share the dream he had entered after setting the intention of meeting with higher intelligences. He found himself in a familiar setting, a law office where he asked two junior members of the firm to help locale a green book he needed to bring a case before a higher appellate court. It seemed that to locate this book, it would be necessary to go two levels above the regular law library. One the first level above were the golden books for intermediate cases; the green book he desired was above those, and he would need to find it for himself.

     As the lawyer went up, he found the scene changing. The wall beside him was now covered with bark, like a tree. He realized, to his wonder, that he was ascending a tree library. Going got harder. He was now climbing an Indian ladder; the rungs were little broken-off branches. Nervous, he was unable to get up to the place of the green book. But he woke with excitement and a strong desire to find what he was seeking.

    This exciting dream invited one of the core techniques of Active Dreaming: dream reentry and tracking. The lawyer readily agreed that he would like to go back inside the dream, with the aid of shamanic drumming, and that he would be happy for the 25 people in our group to accompany him, as trackers, and bring back our impressions. I was especially delighted with the dream because I had had many prior dreams and visions of a library inside a tree that seemed - inside the trunk - to rise as high as a skyscraper.

    This time, the lawyer succeeded in scaling the tree, found his book, and experienced direct contact with what he felt was an intelligent being on a higher level. In my own journey through the portal of his dream, the green book appeared to me with the green scuffed leather covers of my own travel journal. When I opened it, I found the pages of this version were blank. This filled me with an eager sense of possibility: of the potential to start life - and a new book - with fresh vision.

Art: "Message Tree" by Annick Bougerolle

A library full of seeds

Around the turning of the year, I make time to look over old journals. This is part of the ongoing process of composing a life story. It also helps me to keep track of my dream double, and how far and wide he has traveled beyond the milder adventures of my waking self.

Just now I turned up the following dream report from May 2003:

A LIBRARY FULL OF SEEDS

In my library, I am surprised and delighted to see that a shelf has been partly filled with white-covered booklets, in stacks facing outward. These booklets resemble large packets of seeds. The covers are somewhat spackled by time and weather. I have the impression that they have been brought out of old trunks and boxes, including boxes bequeathed to me by a scholar of an earlier generation in my family.

The first brochure I examine is on dreams, and contains the text of an ancient dream - possibly the dream of Scipio (recorded by Cicero) that was central to the medieval study of dreams. As I look over the stacks, I see that the brochures have been organized alphabetically and cover a tremendous range of information. Some titles are the names of countries.

I am excited by the prospect of using these materials. I glance at the larger bookcase on my left, and notice that quite a range of books I had not noticed before (or were not there before) are now on the shelves, including a volume from the chunky Cambridge Medieval History series.

-

I find this a cozy and comforting dream in this winter season, when I am at home for a few weeks, reading wide and deep, and letting the seeds of ideas and stories germinate inside me.