Mysteries of Dreams: Part Two

Greetings everyone and welcome to the second part of my reflections on Dreams. The first, more theoretical part can be found here: https://juliantoh.wixsite.com/website/single-post/2017/04/02/Mysteries-of-Dreams-Part-One.

In this post I will center my discussion around two dreams I believe carried great personal significance for me, in that both may have hinted at the experiential process of death and dying. The significance is not an entirely morbid one, as it has (slightly!) lessened anxiety around the process of dying while motivating me to live more fully in this precious given and transient lifetime.

I’ll first describe a dream I experienced only a few nights ago (April the 1st, 2017: was this some kind of cosmic prank??!). The first aspect that qualified this dream as unique for me was that my ‘dream observer consciousness’ and the physical location of my “I-ness” was in the one and same body. I find that usually in my dreams, I am observing myself as a separate body moving through and interacting with the dreamscape. My observer self is detached from my dream actor self, while both selves are infused with self-consciousness (confusing I know). With this recent dream however, observer and participant consciousness and awareness were fused into my single ‘dream-body’.

It commenced with my awareness of a floating sensation; that I was hovering within an infinitely vacuous and empty space. Initially there was no felt sensation of movement: no downward pull of gravity or upward suction, in fact no pull in any direction at all. There was no sound, and nothing to see. Actually I retained a sense of vision but what I ‘saw’ was Nothingness, not even the palpability of deep, black darkness. I retained a sense of ‘me-ness’ being aware of all this, and also being aware of a mounting but mild mixture or curiosity and perplexity with no anxiety.

Then ‘movement’ and ‘form’ came into being outside of my dream-body. With a gentle and heavy, slow and foreboding pulsatile regularity, an arterial ‘Darkness’ began to close in around me. Within the pulse waves (which seemed to have no organized direction) of what felt like pure potential energy, irregular shapes of indescribable geometry began to episodically indent the fluid-like transparent membranous barrier separating this Darkness from the Nothing. All the while, a low-toned continuous rumbling sound became increasingly audible, as if earthen tectonic plates (if they were present) were actively grinding against each other.

It was at this point that I became aware of being gradually smothered. There was a concomitant sensation of feeling my chest cavity caving inward, with an accompanying restriction in my capacity to welcome in new breath as the audible, pulsating grind of the Darkness grew increasingly louder. Simultaneously, I also felt as if my very life force; the chi or prana, was leaving me via every major and minor bodily orifice, including skin pores and the like. Emotions of near-panic associated with a complete loss of a sense of control and increasing suffocation began to rise. With this anxiety and fear came an innate drive to ‘fight back’: to re-expand my lungs and hence myself, to take back forcefully the precious oxygenated air that was being sucked out of me by this suffocating Darkness which was now closing in from all directions.

The fight to reclaim my Elan Vital did not last long. And I became aware that there was no ‘need’ to fight, and that the near-formless Darkness, despite its suffocating, smothering presence did not carry a malevolent quality. It had no palpable intention. Despite the relentless progression of what was occurring, a kernel of comfort began to manifest in the core of my remaining being. I felt my collapsing dream-body begin to loosen, to let go of the rigidity and tension associated with the fight response. With this came a flash of insight that this Darkness was a representative of open, infinite potentiality. The Kantian Noumenon; the Buddhist Ground of Luminosity; what the Taoists try to describe as The One from which the ten thousand (metaphor for infinite) things arise.

An attitude of radical acceptance came into being, and this accentuated my increasingly open sense of calm , comfort and contentment. I noticed I began to smile inward, while at the same time feeling a process of what I can only describe as a physical dissolution of the body. I observed my now outstretched limbs dissolving; transforming into a deep blue light beginning from the peripheries of my digits. The light formed what appeared to be bubbles, which floated toward the a-geometric shapes with the pulsatile darkness, gently fusing with them. A blue light also began emanating from the region of my heart; with it also the beginnings of internal physical dissolution.

Suddenly however, I became ego-istically self aware again. I realized that I still had tasks and duties unfulfilled in this transient, floating but real world. I became aware of the fact I was dreaming. I subsequently re-channelled my survival drives and attempted to wake up; to forcefully leave this realm of dream and I suspect, the calling of Dream’s sibling Death. Panic once again set in as I felt trapped, suddenly unable to move or talk, unable to leave. However with these sensations came a paradoxical understanding that this actually meant I WAS about to leave, and return to the reality of wakefulness. Multiple previous experiences of Hypnopompic states in my preceding lifetime told me this was so, and as predicted, I woke up. Interestingly, I did so within an emotionally neutral and reflective state. If I had a journal and pen at hand, I would have probably commenced writing about this dream there and then.

It is not my wish to test your attention span as readers, so I’ll keep my description of the second dream relatively short. This one occurred two years ago, while my Martial Arts Sifu (Mr. Low Yoke Lian, RIP beloved Sifu) was in the stages of rehabilitation following a stroke some months before this dream.

This dream was a more characteristic one, carrying the familiar separation between observer and participant consciousness/awareness. It was strangely calm and non-frightening. I say strangely because in the dream, I was aware that I was dying. I was lying relaxed on my back on a soft field of green and yellow grass, with my limbs outstretched in a star formation. The sky was calm with a scintillating azure blue hue; however this quickly became overwhelmed with the rapid, rolling advance of pitch black thunderclouds. Thunderous and violent zigzags of lightning began to strike at the landscape, and it began to rain. The rain however was not of water. It consisted of downward spires of burning, orange flame.

If anything however, this advance of dark shadow, burning flame and transient light coincided with an increased sense of calm. I then became aware of vitality and strength leaving me, quite literally as I began gently but profusely bleeding into the earth around me. Unlike the first dream there was no sense of being crushed or suffocated, but similarly I sustained a sense I was dying.

I woke up quite naturally from this dream, and checked the clock: 1:41am. I climbed out of bed, and refreshed myself with a glass of water before falling uneventfully into a restful slumber. When I woke in the morning, I noticed an SMS on my mobile phone. The time of the message was 1:57am. And the content informed me that my Sifu had passed away that night from a large brain haemorrhage. To this day, despite my general scientific, rational and skeptical orientation, I do wonder if his dying process was empathically attuned to by myself within the domain of dream.

In terms of how my experiences may or may not relate to or be explained by the various theories in Part One, I'll leave this speculation to you the reader. If you wish, you may embark upon your own Interpretation of Dreams- Freudian or otherwise!

Synchronicity, mystery, life and death. It does work in mysterious ways, and reminds me to remain humble in the face of energies and forces we do not, perhaps cannot understand and senses that our perceptual modalities simply do not allow us to experience. Quite apart from dreaming other examples of this that come immediately to mind are:

- My sudden and persistent thoughts on a good friend some months ago, with a subsequent compulsive drive to look for a poem he wrote. Not longer after my frantic and fruitless search, I was informed later that day he had passed away peacefully that very same day.

- A child I know, who had absolutely no inkling that he had a twin who passed away in utero: in his early childhood years constantly telling his parents ‘there’s somebody missing….he has blonde hair like me!”

- Healers (Ruesis, Feng Shui masters) I have occasionally engaged with, who have mystified and stunned me with their apparent knowledge of my past experiences (met many charlatans too, who have stunned me for different reasons!)

- More ‘mundane’ feelings of ‘one-ness’ and ineffability when I am out by myself in natural surroundings

- A strange, somewhat inexplicable sense of connection I feel with certain Shinto shrines in Japan. This is despite the fact I am not Japanese, I don’t speak the language, I have not practiced any Japanese arts, am not even interested in doing so, and didn’t read about Shinto-ism in childhood.

If reflected upon wisely and with guidance from wise others, I believe these intensely personal experiences should not be dismissed and discounted. They are reflective of a ‘sane insanity’ (or is it ‘insane sanity?’) so to speak, and can point us toward self-discovery and psychological liberation. They are precious jewels representing moments of awakened awareness.

Such awakenings have the power to remind us all that the Bell ultimately tolls for everyone without exception, and that Death will eventually envelop us all in her embrace. Our finitude, far from being nihilistic and pessimistic, is as Santideva once quoted: a flash of lightning in the perpetual dark of night. And this finitude can propel us toward leading our transient and potentially brilliant lives with purpose, compassion, an appreciation of beauty, and meaning. That is my hope to all of you.

I will conclude with a closing quote from a favourite TV series of mine, True Detective. In it Rust Cohle, a traumatised philosophical pessimist for most part of Series 1, had these hope inspiring final words referring to the starry pinpoints of light in the night sky:

“Well, once there was only dark. You ask me, the light’s winning.”