Birth,death and dream yoga

Dream Yoga is a valuable method, not only for transforming the ‘sleep state’, but for learning how to approach physical birth or death with a sense of confidence and the possibility of embarking upon a luminous adventure. Ngak’chang Rinpoche will introduce the art of life as the dance of birth and death with the sleeping and waking states. He will teach the Aro gTér cycle of practises which derive from Niguma: the yoga of clear light, the yoga of dream, and the yoga of illusion.

The practices of clear light, lucid dreaming, and illusory wakefulness are techniques for finding self-luminous awareness in every moment of the day and night – whatever our state of consciousness. Both awake and asleep, we lack authentic awareness. During the day, we are distracted by expectations, obligations, and avoidance. In dreams, we lose conceptual consciousness, and in our stupor we are at the mercy of bizarre imaginal events. In deep sleep, we seem to have no awareness at all.

The practice of dream yoga allows access to ‘lucid dreams’ in which we are aware we are dreaming – and are thus able to perform ‘miracles’. Choosing to experience anything we can imagine – dreaming becomes a luminous adventure. The practice of clear light allows us to retain awareness through the process of falling asleep and into the deep sleep without dreams. This practice liberates us from addiction to familiar form and enables us to experience pure awareness without sensory or conceptual content. The practice of illusory wakefulness connects powerfully with dream yoga through sitting meditation in waking consciousness, thus revealing the ‘one taste’ or essential sameness of experience in both waking and sleeping. Together, these practices free us from conceptual limitations of time and space, and allow us to experience the simultaneous continuity and discontinuity of experience.