The Nocturnal Meditations

By Dr. Andrew Holecek
 

The nocturnal meditations are slowly gaining traction in the West, but remain largely unknown. With the help of modern science, these ancient practices have the potential to revolutionize education, creating a distinctive form of “night school.” The unique curriculum begins with lucid dreaming, which is when you realize that you’re dreaming while still remaining in the dream. 

Lucid dreaming is the ultimate in home entertainment. Your mind becomes the theater, and you are the producer, director, writer, and main actor. You can script the perfect love story or the craziest adventure. Lucid dreaming can also be used to solve problems, rehearse situations, and work through psychological issues. From the trivial to the transcendent, lucid dreaming is a spectrum of experience mostly concerned with worldly matters and self-fulfillment.

Going deeper, lucid dreaming can develop into dream yoga, and become a spiritual practice. This is not to say that lucid dreaming isn’t spiritual. It can be. But as a practice, and in contrast to dream yoga, lucid dreaming doesn’t have as many spiritually oriented methods. “Yoga” is that which yokes, or unites. Dream yoga unites you with deeper aspects of your being, and is more concerned with self-transcendence.

Many traditions work with sleep and dreams for spiritual purposes, including Sufi and Taoist dream practice, aspects of Hinduism (Yoga Nidra), and Jewish mysticism (the Kedumah tradition). But Tibetan Buddhism specializes in dream yoga. From the etymology of the word “Buddha” (the “awakened one,” regarded as the ultimate lucid dreamer), all the way to the nocturnal meditations, this tradition has explored the nighttime mind for over 25 centuries.

We tend to think of yoga as physical, stretching the body into various postures, but there are also mental yogas that work to stretch the mind. As a mental yoga, dream yoga may leave stretch marks on your mind. But stretching, at any level, is good for growth. Just as physical yoga makes your body more flexible, dream yoga makes your mind more flexible: that is, adaptable, pliable, malleable, supple, accommodating, compliant, amenable—and open. Who wouldn’t want a mind like this? Once a mind is open and pliable, you can wrap it around all sorts of new experiences. And blessed are the flexible, for they are never bent out of shape. 

With dream yoga, instead of using your mind as an entertainment center you turn it into a laboratory. You experiment with dream meditations and study your mind using the medium of dreams. At this point you become a “spiritual oneironaut.” Oneirology is the study of dreams, and oneironauts (pronounced “oh-NIGH-ro-nots”) are those who navigate the dream world. Just like astronauts explore the outer space of the cosmos, oneironauts explore the inner space of the mind.

While dream yoga originated as a Buddhist practice, the Dalai Lama says, “It is possible [to practice dream yoga] without a great deal of preparation. Dream yoga could be practiced by non-Buddhists as well as Buddhists. If a Buddhist practices dream yoga, he or she brings a special motivation and purpose to it. In the Buddhist context the practice is aimed at the realization of emptiness [the nature of reality]. But the same practice could be done by non-Buddhists.”

Taking this practice further, dream yoga can develop into sleep yoga (“luminosity yoga” in Buddhism), an advanced meditation in which awareness extends not only into dreams but into deep dreamless sleep. Staying awake during dreamless sleep is an age-old practice in Tibetan Buddhism. With sleep yoga, your body goes into sleep mode but your mind “lights up” and stays awake. You drop consciously into the very core of your being, the most subtle formless awareness—into who you truly are.

If you want to go even further, there’s one final destination of the night. Dream yoga and sleep yoga can develop into bardo yoga, the famous Tibetan practices that use the darkness of the night to prepare for the darkness of death. In the Tibetan tradition, death is sometimes referred to as “the dream at the end of time.” Bardo is a Tibetan word that means “gap, interval, transitional state, or in between,” and in this case it refers to the gap between lives. If you believe in rebirth and want to know what to do after you die, bardo yoga is for you. On one level all of dream yoga and sleep yoga is a preparation for death.

Lucid dreaming, dream yoga, sleep yoga, and bardo yoga are the evolution of the nocturnal meditations. Liminal dreaming is sometimes included, which refers to that pre-dream (hypnogogic) state that can also be engaged as a practice. These meditations are designed to bring light into some of the deepest and darkest aspects of your being. An entirely new world of “nightlife” awaits you in the dark, you just have to open the aperture of your awareness. As Thoreau said, “The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn.” 
 

Dr. Andrew Holecek has completed the traditional 3-year Buddhist meditation retreat and offers seminars internationally on meditation, dream yoga, and the art of dying. He is the author of Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep... Dreams of Light: The Profound Daytime Practice of Lucid Dreaming… The Power and the Pain... Preparing to Die... Meditation in the iGeneration… and the audio learning course Dream Yoga; The Tibetan Path of Awakening Through Lucid Dreaming. 

His work has appeared in Parabola, Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, Utne Reader, Buddhadharma, Light of Consciousness, and many other periodicals. Andrew is a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and has authored scientific papers on lucid dreaming. Andrew’s work joins the knowledge of the West with the wisdom of the East in providing a full-spectrum approach to help us realize our human potential. He holds degrees in classical music, biology, and a doctorate in dental surgery. 

Click here to visit Andrew’s website.