Dream Images, by lissa ivy

Feline and Foot

Morning

Describing Dreams, remote account by Alex

I tend to only remember the dream I was having right before I wake up. But I know the moment I get out of bed it will start to fade from memory. So I lay in bed and think about it, which sets it into memory. When I think about it I usually hop around the timeline, one thing will remind me of another, and eventually I will have a linear story. Before I shower (which resets my mind) I will sit down at my computer and type it out in story form. This process imprints the dream deeper in memory but it shifts it from the real life feeling of the dream world, to a weird new state, similar to remembering something that happened in elementary school, you know you were there but it doesn't feel like you.

Vivid dreams are as complex as reality. Trying to describe them does a disservice to their beauty, not that that should stop us. I feel that story form is the best way but trying to convey any experience in story form reduces the resolution. I love story telling but even when you feel like you've said enough to make an image in your listener's minds, they will still never truly feel your experience.

How the brain turns sensory experiences into a single coherent existence is absolutely amazing. I like the kind of science that shows: when you are asked to play a song in your mind while in an fMRI machine, the same places light up as if you had be really listening to a song. But of course this makes perfect sense. How else could it be done? All imaginations hijack the sensory processors to produce the internal experience. But what makes us not see purple dragons flying down the street is because the brain has a "reality first" protocol. You can imagine all you want but the brain will choose to display reality. And that's why dreams are so great! They are a true reflection of your mind, sans real external experiences.

Processing Short Term Memories, by Vibrata

After a week of rather colorful, detailed dreams, I went to bed with high expectations. It was a while before I fell asleep but I was enjoying the music. I was thinking about the dreams I had during the week and thinking about the dreams I had earlier in the week and thinking about the conversations we’d all had before going to bed.

In a hypnagogic state, I realized I had random images of the day’s events flitting quickly through my head and in a moment of clarify, I remembered talking about how dreaming may be the way of converting short term memories into long term memories. Perhaps having the music keep me awake was allowing me a period of awareness of my brain’s processing.

Then, to my surprise, I was wide awake and about 6 hours had elapsed with no recollection whatsoever. The concert was still laying, and it seemed as if I hadn’t been aware of any of it, nor had I had any dream activity. It wasn’t until I went back to sleep after the concert was over that I finally drifted into an active dream space. In the dream, I had transported into the future and the group of us sleeping together in the loft for Oneironauticum were awake in the morning and all having brunch.

house tour, by David

I dreamed I was giving a tour of a house to the group of us sleeping in the loft for Oneironauticum, except it wasn’t actually those people. The house was architecturally interesting, with a glass enclosure in the front overlooking the oceanand a big pool in the back. The owner’s daughter was interested in our group and joined us in the tour. This worried me, since several people in the group were naked.

Hypnagogic Bliss, by Jennifer

I got into bed just past midnight and snuggled in to the opening bars of Somnium. Before long, I drifted into a deep hypnagogic state. In his 1987 book Hypnagogia, psychologist Andreas Mavromatis defines four hypnagogic states: first vague patterns, shape and light (for me often like pointillism), then floaty imagery, sound (maybe voices), perhaps the sensation of movement (that feeling of falling or involuntary jerking), then what he calls autosymbolic phenomena, vignettes or images that represent feelings or thoughts, and then finally hypnagogic dreams, usually shorter and less involved than dreams in REM sleep.

People who fall asleep easily, like me, usually spend less time in hypnagogic states. A long bout of it, then, is a real treat for me. Soon after I laid down, I drifted into that first stage. Bright, pixilated points of light danced around my field of vision like pixies, forming into kaleidoscopic whirling clouds. I continued through all the stages. Faces emerged from the swirling patterns and then become part of a surging crowd of people, a chilling wind blew through the tops of trees at night, a cartoon rodent tried to sell me a sailboat. I cycled through stages of hypnagogia, surfacing close to waking but then sinking down again. At first I tried not to pay much attention. That’s my normal trick for trying to maintain the state, since I always seem to wake myself up if start to notice things too much. But then I realized the hypagogia was staying constant. I could watch it like a movie, fully attentive, and not lose it. It was fabulous.

After what seemed like a long time, I fell asleep. I woke several times throughout the night, however, each time because the music had gone almost completely silent. I would wake up and think, “that’s strange, it’s over but it’s still dark”. Then I would hear distant strains and lie awake until the music returned. Each time, I fell asleep as soon as it filled the room again. I was clearly listening, and also in some way aware that the music had ended before it was supposed to. The piece ended sometime around 7 a.m., but I didn’t wake up then.

In one of my dreams, a very rich man had given a friend of mine a mansion to court her. My friend and I kept discovering things wrong with it, though. The glass dome observation deck started leaking in the rain and we realized it was just saran wrap. Then we discovered that the mansion was really a VW bug.

Minutes of the July Oneironauticum, by Jennifer

In attendance at the July 12 Oneironauticum were dreamers Erik Davis, Vibrata Chromodoris, David Shamanik, lissa ivy tiegel, Dean Mermell, Lesley Freeman, Christine Benvenuto, Matthew Wiegland, Leia, Tristan Naramore, and yours truly, Jennifer Dumpert.

Before going to sleep, we talked about topics relating to dreams, as we usually do. We discussed current research that attempts to explain why humans dream. Current theories include the idea that dreaming helps process short term memory into long term memory. We also discussed our recent dreams. I related stories from the string of lucid dreams I’ve had lately. In one, I found myself able to shoot flames from my fingertips or produce fire and hold it cupped in my hand. Both these ideas appeared in participants’ dreams.

We then bedded down and put on Somnium, a seven hour electronic music piece composed by Robert Rich, designed to match up with the phases of sleep and increase the intensity and recall of dreams. We slept on beds and futons spread out among the various open floors of Vibrata and David’s airy loft, wired for sound with speakers all through the space.

Over brunch the next morning, we shared dreams from the previous night. Several participants reported particularly strong hypnogogic imagery. Hypnogogia, that drifting state in which we see floating, drifting images that may coalesce into proto-dreams, happens at the onset of sleep. Robert Rich writes of Somnium, “the music is aimed at the nebulous territory that exists in your mind when you are hovering between awake and asleep, when you are still aware of your environment, yet detached, when your half-sleeping mind wanders into the realm of hypnogogic images and dreamlike non-linearity.”

The majority of participants also reported dreams involving water (pools, rain, the ocean). Somehow, as we all went to sleep, the water cooler was left partly open. By morning, the leak produced had sent streams across the kitchen floor. Throughout the night, as the water level decreased, the cooler let off occasional bubbling blurps of sound. Anyone familiar with water dispensers knows the sound; it’s the same sound you get when you pour liquid quickly out of a bottle. The event hosts (far away from the bottle spatially but still in audible range) and the two people sleeping near the bottle all consciously noted the sound during the night. Nobody else had any conscious perception of having heard a water-related sound layered over our dream concert.

Because the majority of us dreamed of water, and because the theme of the night involved sound, we concluded that most of us must have had our listening senses well tuned, such that even though we didn’t consciously perceive the sound that clearly indicated water, we clearly mostly processed it at an unconscious, dreaming level.

The Next Oneironauticum is Saturday, July 12

For the July Oneironauticum, we’ll explore an auditory experience designed to promote vivid dreams. Over the course of the night, those of us gathered in the same space will sleep to a recording of Robert Rich’s seven hour composition Somnium, a psychoactive soundscape arranged to match up with the phases of sleep. Rich scored this music to increase the intensity and recall of dreams, in part by keeping dreamers closer to the border to wakefulness during sleep. Visit Robert Rich's website to read his commentary on Somnium.

Robert Rich started giving live, all night concerts for sleeping Bay Area audiences in the early 1980s. During these sessions, Rich would alternate playing more active sound with what he called “slow foggy textures and strange ambient sounds”, timed to accord with the regular cycles of hypnogogic and dream-rich REM sleep. The audience, in sleeping bags, would doze and coast through the varied dream states we all experience throughout the night. In the morning, Rich served the waking concert goers tea and, as with the Oneironauticum, people discussed their dreams.

As always, we encourage remote participation in the Oneironauticum. You can purchase and download an MP3 of Robert Rich’s recording Somnium online, or buy a CD directly from Robert Rich's website. Remote participants can also try sleeping to a different music recording. Put your Brian Eno ambient CD or light piano music on repeat, or just leave your iPod running on shuffle. Whatever works. Also, as always, dreamers can participate remotely simply by setting the intention to join us before going to sleep. All dream participants, those who attend the Oneironauticum and those who join remotely, are welcome to post to this blog. Contact us if you’re interested.

Sweet dreams!

Vivid Sensations, Readable Dream Texts by Jennifer

For the June Oneironauticum at the Ojai Foundation, I downed my bitter brew of Calea Zacatechichi and then followed moonlit paths through the grounds to our spacious yurt, spectacularly perched on the edge of the Eastern lip of the valley.

Erik and I alternated between a sensual sexy vibe and giggling like children, particularly once we’d hunted down a persistent rustling that turned out to be a very cute mouse who barely deigned to scurry away, retreating several times only as far the outside edge of my flashlight’s circled beam.

Though not particularly different or more numerous than usual, my dreams that night were extremely vivid. In one scene, I saw a very high ferris wheel in the distance, with the San Francisco skyline behind. I could make out people raising their arms as they got to the top, barely lower than the tops of the buildings. For a moment I felt the vertiginous sensation of cresting the top of the incredibly tall wheel in one of its rocking gilded gondolas. Then my perspective switched back to my distance view. As I looked at the wheel through a window, I leaned my hand against a wall that began turning. I realized that the wheel was stationary and that it was my building that was turning. I clearly felt the wall sinking down in its rotation and woke up with the sensation still vivid, as real a feeling as my fingers hitting keys as I write this.

In another dream, I discovered the notebooks of a work colleague and realized he’d been taking notes every time we talked on the phone. Among dream enthusiasts, it’s well known that we’re rarely able to actually read text in dreams. In fact, one of the more well known ways of testing to determine if you’re dreaming is to try and read something and see if you can make it out. I could clearly read what A. had written, however, and even made out some sentences in blue ink highlighted with light purple, and other notations in black ink, some underlined. Most of what he had written concerned fairly mundane observations of my reactions to things, e.g. “Jennifer seems excited about lightning in Japan”. The final thing I read said “Jennifer is still pretty, though she’s clearly getting older”. When I reported this dream the next morning, Dale Pendell laughed and commented that I’d gone to a lot of work to get that message from the spirits. Thanks a lot, spirits.

Minutes of the June Oneironauticum, by Jennifer

The most recent Oneironauticum took place during a weekend retreat at the Ojai Foundation called Visionary Practice: Ritual and Reshaping Consciousness, led by Erik Davis, Dale and Laura Pendell, David Presti, and yours truly. Not surprisingly, my part involved presenting and discussing dreams as a type visionary practice, one we all experience regularly. I also talked about how to integrate dreams into daily life via creative practice. The Urban Dreamscape provided my model. On the night of Friday, June 13, workshop attendees, along with remote dreamers, participated in an Oneironauticum.

The workshop marked a special time in the history of a remarkable organization. Sitting on land first purchased in 1927 by Theosophist Annie Besant—who believed that the transformation of humanity into the more evolved “sixth race” would happen in California—the Ojai Foundation played a major role in disseminating a particular kind of mythic, spiritual consciousness into culture. Throughout the 1980s, the Foundation (nicknamed the Wizard’s Camp) hosted workshops led by a range of remarkable figures, including: Joseph Campbell, R.D. Lang, Jean Houston, Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham, Terence McKenna, Ralph Metzner, Francis Huxley, Andrew Weil, Robert Bly, Jose Arguelles, Joanna Macy, Tsultrim Allione, Riane Eisler, and Thich Nhat Hanh. The Foundation also offered dream-focused retreats and classes. As is the way with institutions, however, various factors converged in 1990 that shifted the focus of the foundation to providing education in the Way of Council, a form of group communication practice. Our weekend workshop marks a return to the concerns of the Wizard’s Camp, the first of other such sessions that will run alongside Council training and practice.

For that Oneironauticum, we worked with an infusion of Calea Zacatechichi prepared by Dale Pendell. Calea is a bitter herb native to Southern Mexico and Central America. The Chontal natives, indigenous to the Mexican state of Oaxaca, use it as a means of inducing vivid dreams and practicing oneiromancy, a form of divination based on dreams. Calea is taken as a tea brewed from the leaves of the plant (did I say bitter already? Yeeeach!). The leaves are also smoked, generally in combination with the tea.

Dale’s brew, tastier than any other Calea Zacatechichi I’ve had before, proved quite potent. The group drank all together at the end of Friday’s sessions, just before retiring to our respective rooms to sleep. The next day, we gathered to share our experiences.

Most participants reported waking effects of the Calea. Several people entered into altered, dreamy states within 20 minutes to half an hour, and one retreat attendee who stayed offsite ended up having to concentrate hard on his slow drive home. Participants described general feelings of playfulness before sleep, and some also experienced heightened sensuality. A smaller number reported significant dreams, though several people did discuss having very vivid dream experiences. A couple people reported what they considered meaningful dreams. One of these dreams invoked the retreat itself. This is the most common interesting oneiroic experiences of the Oneironauticum: participants—whether remote or sharing sleeping space—dream of other Oneironauticum dreamers.

On Saturday night, we all enjoyed a different Calea Zacatechichi brew in the form of a liqueur Dale distilled. An Oneironauticum extra, this elixir bridged dreaming and waking worlds quite successfully, and made for a fine celebratory drum and dance circle around the fire.