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Namah Vol. 28, Issue 2, 15th July 2020

says the Self is four-fold. The four are: the place, revealing his own brightness by his own
waking person, the dream person, the deep light — and he dreams. In this state the person
sleep person, and the fourth indefinable becomes self-illumined.(16).”
person. The waking self eats gross food and
is the initial and pervasive one. The dream “The effulgent infinite being, the purusha, who
self is the inhabitant in the Luminous Mind; travels alone, makes the body insensible in sleep
he eats subtle food. His characteristics are but himself remains awake and taking with him
advancement and centrality. The third is the luminous particles of the organs, watches
the Lord of Wisdom, eater of delight, who those which lie dormant. Again, he comes to
has become Oneness. With the quality the waking state (17).”
of advancement the dream self helps the
individual advance in his life’s journey. “The effulgent infinite being, the purusha, who is
With centrality it bridges the waking and immortal and travels alone, guards the unclean
deep sleep states by holding these two ends nest, the body, with the help of the vital breath,
from a central position. The two movements the prana, and himself moves out of thenest.
it assists are the forward movement of the That immortal entity wanders wherever he
individuation process and the inward likes (18).”
exploration, that psychologist Erich Neumann
calls ‘centroversion’. Tibetan dream yoga

The Brihadaranyaka Upanissad describes the In the tradition of Bon Buddhism, dreams are
process in which the dream body, or the subtle so important that the teacher decides what
body of the inhabitant of the Luminous Mind, he should teach a student by asking him
gets its subtle nourishment: the path on which to relate the previous night’s dream. Some
they [the souls] move from sleep to waking students are not admitted to the monastery,
is the nerve that goes upward from the heart; some are given purification rites before the
it is like a hair split into a thousand parts. In dream test is taken again. Tenzin Wangyal
the body there are nerves called hita, which states, “Information from the unconscious is
are placed in the heart. Through these the often of greater value than the information the
essence of our food passes as it moves on. conscious mind can provide (19).” The master
Therefore, the dream body receives finer food guides the student through dream activation
than the gross body. (15). processes that admits him in the night school.
He can access wisdom teachings that he gets
In subsequent verses, the Upanissad describes as a download every night, serially. Tenzin
how the Self journeys from the gross body Wangyal describes these nightly teachings:
to the dream realm, how he constitutes the
subtle body: “Volumes of teachings have been ‘discovered’
this way, including many of the practices that
“And when he dreams, he takes away a little Tibetans have been doing for centuries. This is
of the impressions of this all-embracing world, what we call ‘mind treasure’. Imagine entering a
the waking state, himself makes the body cave and finding a volume of teachings hidden
unconscious and creates a dream body inits inside. This is finding in a physical space. Mind

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