How you know you're not in Kansas any more

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. We must be over the rainbow."

- Dorothy, in the movie version of The Wizard of Oz

I am thinking about the moments, in the midst of a dream adventure, when we wake up to the fact that we are not in ordinary reality.
    You look in a bathroom mirror and you see a very different face.
    You are with people and suddenly remember that in the regular world they are dead.
     Fish start flying through the air.
     A horse jumps out of a painting on the wall and thunders across the room.
     Such moments are prompts to dream lucidity. You say to yourself, I'm dreaming. Sometimes this startles you into leaving the scene and dropping back into your body in the bed. With practice, you may learn to use these awakenings, inside the dream state, to carry on with the adventure, now fully aware that you have the power to navigate, making conscious choices - and powers you don't have when you are in physical reality.
    The prompt may not only help you to become a lucid dreamer; it may awaken you to the fact that you are in a different world. In one of the great Celtic voyage tales (immrama), known as the Voyage of Maeldun, the travelers in their skin boat awaken to the fact that they are no longer on the Irish Sea when they reach an island where the ants are as big as horses. A radical change in the apparent scale of things is a well-recognized indicator that we have gone beyond the bounds of the familiar everyday world.
    I found the following experience thrilling and instructive:

I am bouncing along in a yellow cab in a part of New York City I don't know well. It's run down. The road is potholed. Some of the stores are shuttered, some of the buildings look abandoned. The street seems very wide because there is little traffic.
     The driver is tearing along, much too fast, veering all over the road. I ask him to slow down. He either does not hear me, or has decided to ignore me. I lean forward to speak to him through the gap in the security screen. I notice for the first time that the taxi driver is a dead man. He is yoked to the steering column by a rope tied round his neck like a noose.
     I realize that I am not in any regular city. I must be dreaming. So now I am lucid, yes?
     Yes and no. As this thought rises, the driver slams on the brakes and the taxi stops so violently that I am bounced off the broken springs in the back seat towards the ceiling. I grab the door handle. As I move to get out, the kind of voice you hear in recordings in New York City cabs says, very distinctly,
    "This is not a dream. You are in the afterlife."
    This opens out into a grand adventure in which I entered several different afterlife locales, none of them especially elevated, and learned a good deal about lifestyle choices and dramas on the Other Side.
     At a certain point, I became concerned that I had gone so far and deep that I was uncertain how to get back. Since I was lucid, I was aware that I could simply will myself to go back to my body. Yet I was troubled by the thought that if I tried a quick exit - Back to the body! - I might leave some vital part of myself behind in the Underworld I had discovered.
    I could use a little help, I signaled.
    This inner cry produced an immediate response. An elegant figure, dressed in black and red as if for a costume ball, appeared, with a yellow car that was not a yellow cab, something more like a Mini Cooper. With a dashing gesture, he invited me to hop in and drove me back at amazing speed, up through many levels of the realm I had been in.
    What do I have to say about this? Thank you - for the experience, and the roadside assistance.

Art: "Fish Woman on the Paris Bridge" by Robert Moss. From a dream.

When Scale Matters

 

In the immrama, the Celtic voyage tales, the heroes know they are not in Ireland any more when the relative scale of things changes dramatically. Thus Maelduin’s party comes to an island where the ants are the size of calves. I notice this shift in some of my own dream travels and wonder how common it is for others.

A shift of this kind can be a lucidity trigger. Beyond getting us to ask, Am I dreaming? it prompts the larger question, What world am I in?

In a dream a few months ago I came to the mouth of a treasure cave where the sentinels were golden ants the size of wild bulls. I wasn't scared of them, though I was ant-sized in proporton to them. I thought they were a marvelous specimen of the Dwellers at the Threshold that often challenge our forward movement at important life passages, to ensure that we have the craft and the courage to get us through what lies ahead. I gave them that name in my personal deck of Oracle Cards.

In a dream last night, the shift involved the relative scale of landscape rather than creatures in it, a gentle example of the phenomenon.

October 17, 2021

Dream

Why I Didn’t Get to the Changing Room

I have ten minutes before I pick up my daughter and I am determined to get in a fine blue pool. It’s late in the season, and cool, and I can have the pool to myself. I see some rest rooms that look like white cottages, a short walk away and hurry in that direction to put on my swimsuit. The distance is much greater than I had realized.

What I thought was grass turns out to be the green slope of a mountainside. To get to the top I have to climb over three security fences. Now there is a lake in front of me. What I thought was a pebbly beach turns out to be a tumble of giant boulders. I have to get across the water. I’m not worried because I am still a strong swimmer – until I get in and find that there seems to be an unseen wave machine continuously generating high surf.

I have to work realty hard to get to the other side. I must then clamber up more giant boulders. At the top I look back at the pool where I wanted to swim. Its blue expanse fills the horizon. It has become an inland ocean.

Feelings: Excitement, wonder. Been there, done that.

Reality: I have been in wave pools and could be in one in the future. I also know an Otherworld location with a gentle version of a wave pool. Last night's episode feels like a preview of possible transitions in this world, and others. 

I am remnded that some of my richest episodes of travel to another universe have started with the experience of becoming very small, eventually small enough to pass between the particles of an atom. I save my reports in a folder titled Incredible Shrinking Man. When you get smaller in a dream, it may mean the story is getting bigger.

Images

"Dwellers at the Threshold" by Robert Moss

Design fr Surf Wave Pool in Queensland by Greg Webber

The Invitation to the Island of Apples

For the Celts, the road to the Land of the Living, the Islands of the Blessed, runs ever westward, across the sea. The immrama, or voyage tales, contain vital clues to the ancient European craft of dying. Despite flawed and faulty transcription, gaping lacunae, and editing and censoring by pious monks, the voyage tales still hold the memory of shamanic explorations of the Other Side, and of a deep practice for rehearsing the dying and guiding the departed along the roads of the Otherworld.
    The earliest of the immrama is the Voyage of Bran mac Febal, recorded in the seventh century. His journey begins when he is alone. Unearthly music sends him into deep sleep, and he wakes to find a silver branch, blossoming with crystal flowers, beside him.
    A beautiful woman of the Otherworld appears to him in the locked house and sings to him of the glories of the land from which she has come. In one of the loveliest invitations to a journey in all of world literature, she urges Bran to cross the sea and seek the original Avalon, the Island of Apples:

I bring a branch of the apple tree from Emain, from the far island ringed by the shining sea horses of Manannan mac Lir. A joy to the eyes is the White Silver Plain where the hosts play their games, racing chariots against curraghs...
    There is an ancient tree there in fruit and flower, and birds calling from it; every color is shining there, delight is common and the music sweet.
    There is no mourning or betrayal there...
     To be without grief, without sorrow, without death, without any sickness or weakness - this is the sign of Emain, and no common wonder it is.
     Its mists are magical, the sea caresses the shore, brightness falls from the air.
     There are treasures of every hue in the Gentle Land, the Bountiful Land, the sweetest music and the best of wine. Marigold horses on the strand, crimson horses, sky-blue horses...
      There are three times fifty far islands in the ocean to the west, and every one of them twice or three times more than the land you know.
      It is not to all I am speaking, though I have made these wonders known to all who hear me. Let you who are ready listen from the crowd of the world to the wisdom falling from my song.
      Do not fall upon a bed of sloth. Do not be overcome by drunkenness. Set out on your voyage over the clear sea, and you may chance to come to the Land of the Living, the Land of Women, the Island of Apples.

Who could refuse such an invitation? Bran sets sail with three companies of nine men. They meet Manannan mac Lir - lord of the sea and the Underworld. They reach the Land of Women but after a year they leave because one of the men is homesick.
    When they return to Ireland they find that centuries have passe and they are remembered only as figures of legend. When the homesick man stumbles ashore, he crumbles into dust. Bran and his men cross the waters again and do not return - and yet, in another telling, the head of Bran, the man who went to the Otherworld and returned, becomes a true oracle from generation to generation.

In another immram, the Voyage of Maelduin, the hero's journey begins as a quest for vengeance - for Aillil, Maelduin's the murdered father. But in the course of the voyage, deeper purposes emerge and we travel through a marvelous geography of shifting states of reality and consciousness.
    The transition from an ordinary boat trip is marked by a shift in relative scale and proportions as the voyagers come to an island with "ants the size of foals". Many terrors and temptations and reality shifts follow until they pass through a mysterious Silver Net to realms of abundance and love and deeper wisdom. When a falcon from Ireland appears to pilot them home, their petty agendas are forgotten. Maelduin can forgive his enemies and go home. However, he remains joined to a deeper world.

Text adapted from The Dreamer's Book of the Dead by Robert Moss. Published by Destiny Books. The excerpt from the Voyage of Bran is from Kuno Meyer (trans.) The Voyage of Bran Son of Febal to the Land of the Living (London: David Nutt, 1895). In The Dreamer's Book of the Dead I describe a nocturnal journey in which Kuno Meyer or something like his holographic projection gave me a tour of some of his transitions on the Other Side.

Art: "The Voyage of Bran to the Isle of Women" by Monica Lu.

Immrama: Celtic voyages to the West

For the Celts, the road to the Land of the Living, the Islands of the Blessed, runs ever westward, across the sea. The immrama, or “voyage tales”, contain vital keys to the ancient European craft of dying. Despite flawed and faulty transcription, and gaping lacunae, and editing and censoring by pious monks, the Celtic voyage tales still hold the memory of shamanic explorations of the Other Side, and of a deep practice for rehearsing the dying and guiding the departed along the roads of the otherworld. As Caitlin Matthews says wisely in The Celtic Book of the Dead, “The function of the immram is to teach the craft of dying, to pilot the departing soul over a sea of perils and wonders.”
    The earliest of the immrama is the Voyage of Bran mac Febal, transcribed in seventh century. His journey begins when he is alone – unearthly music sends him into deep sleep. He wakes to find a silver branch beside him, blossoming with crystal flowers. A beautiful woman of the Otherworld appears to him in the locked house and sings of the glories of the land from which she has come. In one of the loveliest invitations to a journey in all of world literature, she urges Bran to cross the sea and seek the original Avalon, the Island of Apples:

The Invitation to Avalon

I bring a branch of the apple tree from Emain, from the far island ringed by the shining sea-horses of Manannan mac Lir. A joy to the eyes is the White Silver Plain where the hosts play their games, racing chariot against curragh….
    There is an ancient tree there in fruit and flower, and birds calling from it; every color is shining there, delight is common and the music sweet.
    There is no mourning or betrayal there...
    To be without grief, without sorrow, without death, without any sickness or weakness – this is the sign of Emain, and no common wonder this is.
    Its mists are magical, the sea caresses the shore, brightness falls from the air.
    There are treasures of every hue in the Gentle Land, the Bountiful Land, the sweetest music and the best of wine…
    Marigold horses on the strand, crimson horses, sky-blue horses.
    It is a land of constant weather. Silver is dropping on the land, a pure white cliff on the edge of the sea, warmed by the sand…
    There are three times fifty far islands in the ocean to the west, and every one of them twice or three times more than the land you know.
    It is not to all that I am speaking, though I have made these wonders known to all who hear me. Let you who are ready listen from the crowd of the world to the wisdom falling from my song.
    Do not fall upon a bed of sloth. Do not be overcome by drunkenness. Set out on your voyage over the clear sea, and you may chance to come to the Land of the Living, the Land of Women, the Island of Apples.[1]

Who could refuse such an invitation? Bran sets sail with three companies of nine men. They meet Manannan mac Lir – lord of the sea and the underworld. They reach the Land of Women but after a year they leave because one of the men is homesick. When they return to Ireland they find that centuries have passed and they are remembered only as figures of legend. When the homesick man stumbles ashore he crumbles into dust. Bran and his men cross the waters again and do not return – and yet, in another telling, the head of Bran, the man who went to the Otherworld and returned, becomes a true oracle from generation to generation.

1. Adapted from The Voyage of Bran Son of Febal translated by Kuno Meyer and Alfred Nutt (London: David Nutt, 1895).

Photo: Landing at Staffa (c) Robert Moss

Text adapted from The Dreamer's Book of the Dead by Robert Moss. Published by Destiny Books.

The Cave of the Dreaming God

I am drawn, again and again, to a mythic version of how physical events are generated in a subtler reality that we could call the Dreamtime, or the matrix, or nonlocal mind. The account comes from Plutarch, the ancient Greek historian, biographer, philosopher, priest of Apollo and initiate of the Mysteries. He was a principal source for Shakespeare's plays and for many generations he was the main source of accessible information on the Egyptian religion of Isis and Osiris. He died at Delphi in 120. He continued after his death to inspire later members of his Mystery tradition through trans-temporal encounters; the philosopher Proclus described his conversations with Plutarch across - or rather, outside - the centuries.
     With Plutarch, we are going to take a look at what can be seen, with inner sight, in the face of the Moon. The source is Plutarch's extraordinary essay titled (in the bilingual Loeb edition) De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet, “Concerning the Face which appears in the Orb of the Moon”.
     Plutarch very cutely presents his narrative as a third-hand traveler’s tale, giving the reader the go-ahead to shrug it off as just another tall tale. In fact, beneath the veils, his narrative of a strange sea voyage is probably a very exact relation of what Plutarch himself, and the fellow-members of his Mystery school had learned through their personal travels across the astral sea. The voyage he describes, to the strange island of a sleeping god, is no more an ordinary sea journey than the voyage of Odysseus or those of Bran and other heroes in the Celtic immrama. 

     Plutarch claims that his source is third-hand, a “foreigner” (ksenos) who told a tale to a Carthaginian of a voyage to a western island, five days sail beyond Britain, where the deposed god Kronos lies captive and dreaming in a cave. Kronos sleeps confined in a deep cave of rock that shines like gold. His sleep was cast on him by Zeus, who toppled him from his place as the high god and now keeps him bound. He is fed by birds that fly in over the summit of the rock, dropping ambrosia. His island is suffused with delicious, sleep-inducing fragrance that streams from the rock as from a fountain
    The sleeping god is served by spirits [daimones] who were his comrades when he was king. They derive prophecies from his dreams. “The prophecies that are greatest they come down and report as dreams of Kronos”
    The dreams of Kronos become thoughts in the mind of Zeus. From the mind of Zeus, what was conceived in the dreams of the sleeping god becomes events in the worlds of gods and humans. Those intrigued by what quantum physics suggests about the nature of reality - for example, that the act of observation plucks an event into manifestation from a soup of possibilities - may here find a mythic model for understanding. The ancient philosopher, weaving myth, has given us a vivid account of a matrix, a formative reality which inspires thoughts that eventually generate physical events.
   Plutarch's supposed source, the “foreigner” traveled across a “congealed sea”.at the time when the star of Kronos (the Night Watchman) entered the sign of the Bull.

    Quite as interesting as the account of the dreaming god is the stranger's statement that “among the visible gods we should especially honor the Moon." The Moon is "sovereign over life and death" and borders on the realms of Hades.He proceeds to give an account of the transits of the soul, in the precinct of Luna.

Photo of Ryugu Sea Cave by Batholith via Wikipedia Commons.