Dream Yoga

From wikipedia:

"Tibetan Dream Yoga is described by Evans-Wentz in his book Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines (London: Oxford University Press, 1935) as one of the six subtypes of yoga elaborated by the Tibetan guru Marpa and passed down by his disciple Milarepa. The author describes six stages of dream yoga. In the first stage, the dreamer is told to become lucid in the dream. In the second stage, the dreamer is instructed to overcome all fear of the contents of the dream so there is the realization that nothing in the dream can cause harm. For instance, the lucid dreamer should put out fire with his hands and realize fire cannot burn him in the dream. Next the dreamer should contemplate how all phenomena both in the dream and in waking life are similar because they change, and that life is illusory in both states because of this constant change. Both the objects in the dream and objects in the world in the Buddhist worldview are therefore empty and have no substantial nature. This is the stage of contemplating the dream as maya, and equating this sense of maya with everyday experience in the external world. Next, The dreamer should realize that he or she has control of the dream by changing big objects into small ones, heavy objects into light ones, and many objects into one object.

After gaining control over objects and their transformations, in the fifth stage, the dreamer should realize that the dreamer’s dream body is as insubstantial as the other objects in the dream. The dreamer should realize that he or she is not the dream body. The dreamer who has gained complete control over dream objects could, for instance, alter the body’s shape or make the dream body disappear all together. Finally, in the sixth stage, the images of deities (Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, or Dakinis) should be visualized in the lucid dream state. These figures are frequently seen in Tibetan religious art (thangkas) and used in meditation. They are said to be linked to or resonate with the clear light of the Void. They can therefore serve as symbolic doorways to this mystical state of being (the Void or clear light). The dreamer is instructed to concentrate on these symbolic images without distraction or thinking about other things so that the revelatory side of these symbols will become manifest."

Everyone can draw his conclusions from that. Part of what I think for that is that, obviously, it describes the stages of LD, also it introduces a 6th state not so commonly experienced by LDers. Near Death experiences as described by Buddhism seem to have a lot of meeting points with Bardo ( the transitional stage of death to another life). From up to that point I don’t know if the possibility of OBEs is also open, it is described aswell in Buddhism. Personally I have reached up to certain aspects of the 5th state in LD, altering the dream body, but on rare occasions, if I could describe it it would be that no longer conscience that I have a body existed and I was somewhat unified with the enviroment, like a flow of things. It describes, up to the 4 first states what is commonly known. Personally I only recently managed to uncover how to turn almost any dream to a lucid one, I had dreams that were lucid from the start but to make any dream clear of it’s nature I didn’t know. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th stages I uncovered before the 1st. Your thoughts.

At the moment I’m reading “Creative Dreaming” by Patricia Garfield in which she also writes about the Dream Yogi and refers to Evans-Wentz. Dream Yoga is in my opinion something very, very interesting. Most of it is obvious and well known to us lucid dreamers, but we can learn a lot from it. What I think is great about Dream Yoga is that you can still use it and relate to the stages even if you are not a Buddhist nor skilled in self-control as the Dream Yogi are.

Agree, that’s because buddhism isn’t dogmatic like some religions, it’s more about mind and body developing as realizing real earth like problems and trying to solve them… At least that’s my view on buddhism…