After midnight, I lie on my back and close my eyes. I do much of my best work
in bed but not when I approach it in the spirit of work. I tell my friends who
are serious meditators that my favorite spiritual practice is horizontal
mediation, but I don’t say this seriously. No mantras, no breathwork by the
numbers, no specified body postures, no fixed agenda. I’ll just let my body get
comfy and be open to what flows in my mind and my inner senses. Relaxed
attention, or attentive relaxation. That’s all I require of myself. Sometimes it enables me to maintain continuity of consciousness through all the phases of the night.
When images come, I may let them rise
and fall, content to see what is surfacing from my subconscious or looking in
from the limitless universe outside me. If no images come, I’ll be content to
drift off into industrial sleep and let my body rest. I may wake up to the fact
I am dreaming inside a dream, or not. I may not recall my dreams from the first
sleep cycle, though I will check and pay attention to my feelings and
sensations when I am missing a story. I can usually detect a dream hangover even
when I have lost the dream that caused it. Most often it’s the sense of being jet
lagged, or travel worn. I know where that comes from. With or without travel plans,
my dreams are often excursions. I get out and about. I visit places on the other
side of this world, and in parallel worlds, and in worlds where the dead and
the living rub shoulders. The Society for Psychical Research called such outings
psychical excursions. A Moroccan dream interpreter calls them exits
of the soul.
For now, though, I’m just lying on
my back. My right leg is bent at the knee, giving me the look of the Hanged Man
in the Tarot. I straighten it out and give it a good stretch. Shreds and
blotches of color float by on my mental screen. There’s a wriggling something pushing
in from the edge that could be a giant millipede if I let it, but I wish it to
become a lovely many-leaf plant. Geometric patterns form and reform, then
textures, weaving and netting, then a parade of faces – some like cartoons or
kids’ drawings, many realistic, so many. For a while, it’s like rush hour at a
subway station. Everything is changing and racing fast and there are constant
popups and inserts. It’s hard to hold onto anything much. I remember William
James saying that in ten minutes in the liminal space of hypnagogia, he saw a
thousand images. That sounds about right.
Things are still busy on my mental screen,
but there are two notable changes. First, the scene is slowing and stabilizing.
Second, I am in it. I’m no longer a voyeur. I’m out and about, on a
bridge, with streams of pedestrians moving both ways on either side of me. I
smell salt water, engine oil, and fish. The people on the bridge are mostly
dark skinned. Many of the women wear hijabs and long form-concealing dresses. A
few are in full burkas. A boy on a bicycle is selling round breakfast rolls. I can
smell the poppy seeds.
I am happy when my senses come alive
as they are doing now. It means I’m there, in a real place I may or may
not be able to name. It means I have bilocated, because while I am walking on
the bridge, wishing for one of the poppyseed rolls, I am perfectly aware that my body is in bed,
and I can look in on it. I can wave to myself if I like, though that might confuse
the people on the bridge. Or rather, it wouldn’t, because there is no sign that
they can see me or are remotely aware of my presence.
I know exactly where I am now. I am in
suspension. I am on the Bosphorus Bridge, a steel suspension bridge that joins
the continents of Europe and Asia. Before me and behind me are the two halves
of the enormous world-city, Istanbul. I
see boats of all sizes on the water, monstrous container ships from the Black
Sea, ferries from the Princes Islands, fishing dhows and floating restaurants.
I'm not conscious of cars or trucks
on the bridge, just the stream of pedestrians walking both ways, of varied ethnicity
and dress.
A woman steps out of the crowd. With a few
steps, she is in front of me. She wears a long white silk garment, streaming to
her ankles. Her matching hijab covers her face except for her dark shining
eyes. In this simple Muslim garb, she is unspeakably elegant, and I know she is
very beautiful. There is a faint smell of roses. She looks hard at me and asks,
"Are you Turkish - or Romanian?"
I am so surprised by the question,
cadenced by the pause, that I fall out of the dream and am fully back in the
body on the bed.
Fortunately, I have some experience
of revisiting dreams.
I will myself back to the bridge,
and wish the woman in white to still be there.
There is a shimmer where she stood,
then she reappears. It’s a little like watching an image emerge from a blur of
pixels. But now she seems fully present. I smell roses, and the long dark hair
she keeps covered. I told her I am amused by her question. I have friends in
both Turkey and Romania. I taught and traveled in both countries and flew back
and forth between Istanbul and Bucharest.
She has brought me a message. She speaks
for a Sufi order – she names it - that is interested in my work and would like
to meet me. Will I be coming to Turkey soon?
I would be honored to meet, I tell
her.
The next day, I receive an invitation from a friend to return
to Turkey to lead a workshop. Does my friend know the Sufi order that was
mentioned on the bridge? Yes. It is famous for accepting women as equals with
men, and for incorporating some shamanic methods for shifting consciousness.
There are dreams that spill into
the world.
Illustration: "Are You Turkish or Romanian?" RM + AI
