Dream bilocation

 

Do you experience being in two (or more) dreams at the same time? I am not talking about the experience of dream-within-dream (though that is no less interesting) but about being conscious that you are involved in two (or more) unfolding and distinct dream situations at the same time. You may or may not be aware of your dormant body in the bed while engaged in these other realities.

We may find it hard to sustain dual (or multiple) consciousness in dreamtime. As we leave the dreams, our waking editor - who likes linear order - may try to turn them into a single narrative, blurring our memory and understanding of what was going on.

The phenomenon is important. Growing the ability to sustain consciousness in two or more dream situations at the same time is excellent practice for becoming a conscious citizen of the multiverse.

I had an indelible experience of this when I was teaching at the Esalen Institute in California., which I titled “Mysteries of Ulan Bator”. I was caught up in twin adventures in Mongolia, one in the 1930s (involving a race to locate the spirit banner of Genghis Khan), the other in a possible or parallel future, where I am arriving in the Mongolian capital to take part in a conference on shamanism. At the same time, I am aware of my body in the bed and the roll of the Pacific breakers under my windows in the Big House.

This was a case, at the least, of trilocation.  I was in three different times and at two different places. And while seesawing between my room at Big Sur and Mongolia in the past and possible future, I was sometimes able to observe all three situations. 

In his notes in The Unknown Reality (a Seth book) Rob Butts, Jane Roberts' husband and amanuensis, writes that he was amazed when he first found himself in two dream situations simultaneously. His astonishment deepened when he discovered that his experience  were trumped by those of others in their circle, notably Sue Watkins, who claimed to be able to sustain consciousness of many personalities and their dramas at the same time, in dreaming.

When you become aware that you are dreaming, inside a dream, you may find that you are practicing a simple form of bilocation, at least while you remain lucid. Your dream self is out there, near or far, while you are also aware of your dormant body, alive and breathing, and its physical environment.

I know that bilocation can be accomplished in states of waking dream. I think of the evening when I was drumming for a shamanic circle on a mountain in the Adirondacks when a hawk that was visible and palpable only to me slapped my shoulder. The hawk encouraged me to leave my body, traveling with part of my consciousness, for a reunion with an important mentor, an arendiwanen or woman of power who was Mother of the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk people centuries ago. While I traveled to meet her. enough of my mind remained with my body in the room for me to be able to continue to drum for the group and to watch over its physical and psychic wellbeing.

Journal drawing by Robert Moss