Life is But a Dream: Dream Yoga in Tibetan Buddhist Tantra

• Authors: Bruce M. Knauft, Emory University
• Journal Title: Ethos
• Publisher: Wiley | 2019
• Type of Work: Article | Preprint: Prior to Peer Review
• Subjects: Anthropology, Cultural; Psychology, Cognitive
• Keywords: dreaming; waking; consciousness; mental states; projections; day dreaming; somnolence; lucid consciousness; spirit possession; shamanism; hallucination

Abstract

The thesis of my paper - evolving out the abstract submitted months ago - is that our lingering ethnocentric reification of "dreaming" as not just distinct from but the opposite of "waking" - dream consciuosness versus waking consiousness - elides and occludes much power and value in and across mental states that include dreaming. There is arguably a strong connection if not continuum across mental states that may include waking thought projections, day dreaming, somnolence, and states of lucid consciousness that can include dreaming, spirit possession or shamanism, and the impact of externally induced hallucinogenic visions and experiences. Especially when viewed in comparative cultural context, there is frequently a prductive if not conversational continuum across diverse types and states of consciousness, While this is a simple and obvious point - and one that psychological anthropologists have been at the forefront of making for many years, it can be useful to reassert and rediscover it in our current context of dreams and dreaming. Like the critique of the Western split between mind and body, as well as that between mind and brain, critiques once made don't preclude the scholarly tendency to reproduce them over time, reinforcing their continuing limitations of perspective. Like other contraining Western reifications and polarized conceptualizations, that between waking daytime consciousness and the nighttime consciousness of dreaming can be productively reconsidered.