OK then other experiences, some "wu" for you.

First, at least for me there are three types of dreams, regular ones which are forgotten, lucid ones which may or may not be forgotten, and vision dreams; vision dreams you will always remember, and I would place astral projection in with that along with remote viewing in a way.

When I was 2  or younger, not sure, I started having 'night terrors' but the main one, the first, which was recurring, was remembering my previous death; I never really understood it until I read about others' experiences and what it is considered. Is it true? Maybe, it doesn't really matter. But holy cow as a 2 year old it was terrifying. It only lasted for a brief period though the night terrors kept on, but less until puberty.

When I was 25 or so I met my first Master, so to speak, actually we never spoke. I was friends with a Buddhist monk in SF who was working with the Hopi and he was hosting a Hopi elder. We were playing music at his house and at one point I realized this elder was staring at me from across the room in an alcove where he had been sleeping. I was compelled to stop and join him, we sat in silence while my friend made tea, and then he explained that the elder who did not speak much if any English was traveling etc. Three months later he told me that this man had passed away three days earlier. Three nights earlier I had had the first completely lucid vision dream since I was young. Watching the park where I grew up, then seeing myself flying over the stream in the park, then being that body, which then was a body of light, and then just light, a ball of light traveling upstream and back into the ancient past. Shocked/spooked me actually, this connection transformed my path in many ways.

Some standard lucid dreaming, two cases of what can be called astral projection or remote viewing which was kinda creepy actually.

Work with Clear Light meditation of the 15th Karmapa has produced a similar experience of light, more than once, it has been the lucid experience of light pervading my consciousness; not as perception but as awareness of the nature of Mind and Universe I would say. This is also similar to the experience that can be produced by Kriya Yoga, Shambavi Mudra, Shinay - staring at the third eye for an extended period, takes me 30 minutes of breath work to get there but does not take any religious belief to do, just practice and a functioning nervous system, heart, and breath. Slowing your breath radically down ( for me that is 2 or three breaths per minute), with a longer out breath that produces a disruption in the heart back-pressure which produces a rhythm that resonates the fluid in the brain's ventricles. First a blue disk will appear and then a star-like pattern will appear. While this is purely a biological feedback effect it will entrain the mind to be capable, when in a very relaxed state with thoughts falling away, to open the door - opening the door for me at least has been an immense flash of all encompassing light pervading all of one's nature and mind (not seeing so much as being), sound can be accompanied with this, some times not, sometimes just sound and again it is vast - for me it has been roaring thunder, and the last time with light it was like an immense choir of angels. That is the best I can do for a description, hard to describe the beauty and purity of it.

In 2019 when my Mom became ill one day while I was sleeping in late (thank you covid lock down) my brothers and sisters were texting about what was happening. While this was going on for the first time ever my father was in a dream of mine, never before, never since; he was telling me that my mother needed help, then I woke up suddenly. I thought it was very odd to have seen my dad in a dream but whatever, went to the bathroom to get the day going etc. and saw there were a ton of texts about my mom needing help and what we were going to do. Needless to say, that was a surprise. Packed everything up, ditched my apartement and flew home to get her out of the hospital so she could be at home etc.,  she died at home with family two weeks later.

As a side note to this is the Tibetan Phowa practice of preparing oneself for death. Tantric union practice of sorts with light work involved, opens your crown chakra and produces a tiny hole or a rash at the Bindu (the soft spot on the skull when you are born) where you exit at death. Three days before she died I was experiencing what are called the hungry ghosts emanating from her presence, also in dream some related activity, and two or three weeks after she died for about a month my Bindu was bleeding. I add this to make the connection between birth, life, and death. Another activity that I do not recommend and will not tell you how to do, it came to me as a side note from a lama relating to Shinay practice, is inducing the capacity to see the spirits of the dead - ghosts. I was told not to, but of course I did and it worked. Scared the shit out of me and I stopped and blocked it. (think I'm crazy? sure felt crazy) I tell this story to complete the circle.

The notion of 'non dual', and Bernardo Katsrups framing of egoic consciousness as a state of personal discrete mind disassociated from Universal Mind - and you can add to that the Akashic Record, Henri Bergson's notion of memory, Sheldrakes Morphic fields and the like - are one and the same. Mind as a field of vibration and matter as dew drops condensing out of the mist of this all encompassing light & sound are one. That mind which is disassociated from Mind is not separate, only our perception of mind is such. The distance or separation between us is actually a bit fuzzy, it only appears/seems that there are distinct boundaries. Bernardo speaks of this. The non-dual experience, the light and sound in dreams and meditation, and at death are one and the same. That which people describe as ghosts is no different than the sublime experience one can have in certain zones in Nature, or in Holy places, places of death and such, a ghost is just a memory held out of the disassociated body/mind, the sublime but the connection between you/self and other/nature. Reaching or returning is not remembering but the forgetting that you are seperate, not trying but releasing, the current in the ocean coming to rest is not separate and at rest/peace is again as one. That which perceives the light is still in the dual illusion, that which is aware of being light is non-dual.

The Mind is truly astounding.
I hope this helps your search, or rather, I hope your search comes to rest in the purity of Mind which is your true nature.

The Socratic injunction to "know thyself" - the master asks the student, do you know your true self? The student works and works to answer this question, looking everywhere for the answer. The answer - Master, I am your own true self.

Fellow travelers may Peace and Love be with you

Timothy Rollin Pickerill
646-299-4173 (cell)


On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 2:29 PM Nicholas Lattanzio <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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Thank you both for your insights and reflections! Definitely a book I will read too, fairly synchronistic that the author is the same teacher Bruce lived with! 

And yes Bruce, if youre referring to Joe Dispenza as that source I share your skepticism. It was some fairly random meditation with a lot of strong claims about activating tue pineal gland and other mytho-romantic idealizations. Regardless, I ended up having this experience, which I'm not sure fits neatly into the Tibetan categories, except possibly as clarity due to the profound experience of deidentification (though not the most "I" have felt). 

I actually had a clear light dream, or as I know it a White Dream (I think it's more of a research term)tern, when I was in my undergraduate schooling. It was nothing, absolute void, no sense of time whatsoever, but definitely a stable experience of awareness. Only in referencing it can I generally speak to the Absolute Knowing that I AM that simply was. 

Interestingly that textbook White Dream was directly preceded by a fairly lucid dream in which I had an hours long conversation with some elderly lady. I can't say for sure, but if I had to guess it was my grandmother who passed when I was 4 or 5, but for all I know it was some random fictionalized person. I do look back at that conversation as one I took something big away from, I don't remember the conversation at all aside from a clear instruction that I "can't stop yet." Which has always been a source of inspiration for me though I don't know it's specific referant. That dream ended with the roof collapsing too a lava-like fire and then boom, just nothing. There may have been a thought about whether or not I was dead as the dream content transitioned.

These kinds of experiences fascinate the hell out of me. I'd love to hear some of yours and others experiences along these lines too! 

Regards,

Nicholas G. Lattanzio, Psy.D.

On Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 12:41 PM Tim Pickerill <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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Bruce I know you have done a lot of work with this in particular - I have stayed clear from it as I have had horrible insomnia for years which acupuncture thankfully fixed, clear light is enough for me - can you maybe describe some of your experiences?


On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 1:35 PM Bruce Alderman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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Yes, that is the teacher at whose house I was living.

On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 10:33 AM Tim Pickerill <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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I very much recommend this book which describes the practice- basically what you described but formalized as a practice. 
T

On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 12:17 PM Tim Pickerill <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Very cool Nick, I would recommend checking out Tibetan teachings on this. As Bruce described there are well developed practices for this which I do not believe you need to belong to a sect in order to practice. Belonging to the Karma Kadgu school I do Clear Light practice of the 15th Karmapa which is different but adjacent. Before going to sleep you embody light in your heart chakra and hold that in any waking or lucid states that may arise. Coming to a lucid state as light/conscious awareness is very interesting and points to what you speak of - base mind. 

Good luck in your mind travels

On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 11:01 AM Bruce Alderman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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Nicholas, very interesting.  Thanks for sharing this here.  I'm a little skeptical of the source or guide for this particular meditation, but not of your experiences.  I studied dream and sleep yoga for several years while living at a Tibetan lama's house, and recognize - not exactly in form, but in spirit and in some of the phenomenal and processual particulars - the territory you are describing.  

Tibetan tradition differentiates between samsaric dreams, dreams of clarity, and clear light dreams.  Samsaric dreams, as you can imagine, are dreams driven by past experiences and our emotional reactions to them, our fixations, etc.  Dreams of clarity are dreams where some deeper wisdom shines through, where we receive some genuine spiritual insight, some existential and moral clarity.  They are "teaching dreams" or "initiatory dreams" -- Big Dreams, in Jung's sense.  And dreams of clear light are generally lucid dreams, but not just lucid in the sense of recognizing we are dreaming; they may also involve the recognition of awareness itself, of the base of awareness.  In sleep yoga, you practice the (reflexivie) recognition of base awareness in the Delta state, where there is typically no thought or other content present.  The 'clear light' here is not a brilliant (visual) white light, of course, but the simple clarity of awareness itself.

The transition from a surface-content orientation, a phenomenal orientation, to the 'causal emptiness' of a content-free Delta state can (for me also) feel like a "sucking into" or "sucking back into."  

On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 6:49 AM Nicholas Lattanzio <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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Good morning fellow UTOKers,

I just wanted to share a powerful experience I had unintentionally while doing one of those odd Joe Dispenza meditations (which last like 3 hours typically). It was a very hybrid meditation, starting with Dispenza orienting us towards different energy centers in the body and trying to experience them simultaneously (something I've always struggled with since I tend to shift directly into a more panoramic awareness). 

So as I was doing this I began to fall asleep, which will happen time to time for any regular meditator even after years of practice, and I would do the routine zazen-esque redirecting of my attention whenever I noticed I was nodding off (very much like when we seem to "jerk ourselves" awake when falling asleep in your leisure spot). As this deepened, probably about 90-120min into the meditation, there was a strong detachment wherein my visual field seemed to shrink away like I was being pulled back into the Isness 'behind the eyes,' which is different than self-abidance or resting as nondual awareness- this was closer to an "encounter with the void." 

Although my eyes were closed, I still had a visual field, and aside from my visual snow that field was empty until I 'got sucked back.' Suddenly I started to see images, and it was an experience where the empty field seemed to flip (perceptually it was literally like the nothing flipped over to something like flipping a coin), and I was watching images play like a movie across a portion of my visual field (the part that I had been sucked back from). Though I was not thinking, I was still there. I ended up nodding off even in that state and went into the images that I am convinced now we're an actual dream, as I began to experience it first hand. This led to a lucid dream realization (a very rare occurrence for me), and upon realizing I was dreaming I was sucked back out into the space. 

This happened 2 or 3 times before I went to the space again and either actually fell asleep or shifted back to the meditation (I have no way of knowing if I actually passed out or not since I wasn't keeping time, but when I came back to the meditation there was about 30min left so it couldn't have been long). 

Having practiced self-inquiry for years now I was no stranger to the state of no-self, total deidentification with content, which was the space I was being sucked back to. I say this because after switching out of the dream I had absolutely no idea who I was, and I for sure was not dreaming that I was myself, I was a different race and in the dream I knew a different name. Being sucked back I was still able to observe the dream and when going back in would pick it up as if I was running into the the screen of a movie to join the actual movie and absorb into the screen. 

The usefulness of this relates directly to nondual awareness (no self), and has relevance for the ToK System in particular. What happened here is sleep meditation, a very advanced and not well known meditation wherein the meditator allows the body to fall asleep and remains as the witness throughout sleep. Sleep meditation is almost impossible to look up online, all you'll really find is guided meditations to help you sleep and similar minor cultural appropriations of meditation, but it is a nondual practice and is common in several Hindu and some Buddhist schools. 

The relevance for ToK System is that this was a first-person experience of what can be said to be at least the base of Mind, as nondual awareness precedes even consciousness and certainly identification (Culture). And, though anecdotal, this experience is entirely consistent with research on nondual awareness as underlying any content or phenomenon regardless of their presence (with the exception that my brain wasn't being imaged). I was deep in a state of wakefulness for at least most of the meditation itself, suggesting alpha waves predominating early, the periods wherein I was watching the dream "flip" on and off strongly suggest theta waves were increasingly present, I don't believe I reached deep sleep/delta wave sleep, despite apparent REM-phases, so if there were Delta waves I was present with them, as I definitely did not awaken from a deep sleep at any point in this.

Thought it would be interesting to share, this is right on the line between 1st and 3rd person empiricisms. Would love to hear what people have to say, even of you're skeptical of my experience.

Regards,

Nicholas G. Lattanzio, Psy.D.
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