From the author: Interview for the Volga TV channel “We are woven from the same substance as our dreams” William Shakespeare Dreams and their messages. Do you have dreams? Have you tried to find meaning in the strange kaleidoscope of night phantasmagoria? Who is their author? Are you, your subconscious, a tired brain, going through the impressions of the day? A host of spirits and invisible forces that visited us, shining magical fireflies that brought strange pictures of distant worlds? An alert mind, calculating future options and exploring alternative versions of the past? Is it possible to create a dream intentionally? Manage it, influencing events in the outside world? Or just rethink the past, drawing lessons and experience from it? A dialogue about dreams is conducted on the Volga TV channel by the host of the program “For those whose soul does not sleep” Mikhail Zyablov and psychologist Evgeny Gabelev. Dreaming worldMikhail: So, dreams! Obviously, human beings have seen them throughout many thousands of years of history. The world in which we spend a third of our lives has always attracted mystery. Legends about inspiring supernatural events occurring to a hero in a dream, and their consequences in the waking world, are present in the myths, legends and sacred texts of almost all peoples of the world. Dream interpretation is part of the process of modern psychoanalysis. What is a dream, and how seriously should we take its messages? Eugene: There is reason to believe that a person begins to see dreams earlier than the real world. Research has shown that babies dream even before birth. What is their content and where does he get the material for them is a mystery. Supporters of materialism tend to believe that the only source can be the impressions and feelings of the mother, with whom he is inextricably linked. Mystics and supporters of Eastern religions believe that their content is memories from a past life, or from the Bardo state - the interval between lives, the connection with which the child retains until the moment of birth. Theologians may suggest that the infant's dreams are memories of God, the one world soul from which his individual has just separated. At the same time, it is quite possible that planning and reviewing the events of the entire future life takes place. Or, in a softer version, future inclinations and character traits are laid down. Animals also see dreams. If there are no sufficient grounds to say this about insects and fish, then in relation to mammals this is a scientifically established fact. Mystics may assume that the ability to dream is inherent in bacteria, trees and stones, but further we will talk about the ideas of science. Obviously, the first humanoid ancestors of modern man also saw dreams. Dreaming was a part of life long before the advent of cities, tools, art and speech. Before consciousness and reason in the modern sense of these words. Thus, dreams inevitably had to influence the formation of thinking, culture and ideas about the world. Due to the uniqueness and fantastic plasticity of the images, their plots made a decisive contribution to culture, mythology, the formation of religions and the very style of thinking. Incomparably greater than logic, mathematics, ethics and philosophical abstractions. Moreover, our thinking and speech are still based on the dreamlike perception of the world. Logical reason is only a thin film on the thickness of the ancient mind of the dreamer. Dreams have been given great importance in all centuries and in all cultures. They prophesied and made fateful decisions. They looked for answers to the main questions of existence. They went for help from higher beings, healing and wisdom. In different eras and among different peoples this took different forms. Ancient temples of the god of sleep, in which those seeking advice spent the night among the Egyptians and Greeks. Collective discussion of dreams among Polynesians and African peoples. Shamanic journeys in dreams and secret mysteries of invoking dreams in reality. Many events, travels and encounters with supernatural beings that happened to heroes in their dreams have become an important part of world religions. Muhammad was taken up to heaven by an angel during a speciala mystical dream, where the mysteries of heaven were revealed to him and the text of the Koran was transmitted to him. Biblical patriarchs receive revelations of divine wisdom in their dreams, fight with angels and ascend into heaven. Heroes of the Celts and Slavs travel along the World Tree, visiting the worlds of their ancestors and gods. Ancient epics not only regularly transfer the action to dream worlds, but they themselves have a dream-like structure and nature. Subsequently, in the heat of enlightenment, all this was rejected by the emerging scientific thought. It took a lot of effort to return the mind to its roots. The founders of psychoanalysis were repeatedly accused of obscurantism for trying to give meaning to dream images. Gradually everything fell into place. We now know that a dream is not a symptom of fatigue or illness, as was believed a century ago. Not a sign of madness. Do not ruminate on the impressions of the past day. Dreaming is a way of functioning of the unconscious layers of the psyche. Freud called the dream the royal road to the secrets of the subconscious. By exploring it, we bring consciousness into contact with its deep basis. Jung called the process of dream interpretation the transcendental function. The amorphous contents of the subconscious are clothed in the form of logical structures and meaningful messages. If a dream is a natural form of existence for most of us, then working with its content is a process of integration of the psyche. During it, the wisdom of the universe and its mysterious forces, the knowledge of our own hidden capabilities, becomes available to us. This is how the ability to consciously manage them returns. The Road of the Kings Michael: In a dream, we are not aware of ourselves. And this seems like a very strange misunderstanding. There are books whose authors claim that it is possible to learn to control the course of dream events. Realize yourself in it as if in reality. Watch dreams like a movie - custom-made, with a given plot, characters and setting. What is a lucid dream? How to master it, and why even be aware of yourself in a dream? Evgeniy: Dreaming penetrates wakefulness. Present in it. We remember individual dreams. We discuss and interpret, connecting night images with the consciousness of the day. Fantasies and dreams have a dream-like nature. The line between worlds is not a stone wall. Rather, it is a membrane. Naturally, the question arises about the penetration of consciousness into the forbidden territory of sleep. The ability to think rationally does not turn off overnight. Rather, it decreases, and to varying degrees in different situations. However, as in reality! An extreme case of loss of control is an uncontrollable nightmare. The opposite is the so-called vivid or lucid dream. The latter are particularly bright, have a deeper effect of presence and the ability to realize oneself. And even better and sharper than usually in reality! What is often meant by lucid dreams is the ability to induce a state of lucid sleep. Awareness increases sharply in him. There is euphoria and a feeling of understanding. Lucid is the nocturnal analogue of inspiration and creative uplift. This pleasant state is often mistaken for “astral travel” to other worlds. In such dreams it is really possible to create virtual reality. Play with characters and circumstances. Experience incredible adventures, much more real than modern computer technology allows. However, that's not all! In addition to the many different states of mind that are collectively called sleep, there are much deeper realities. An ordinary dream is just a gateway to them. It is precisely at transferring the dreamer’s consciousness through them that the true magic of shamans and yogis who practice ancient dream yoga is aimed. Michael: What is Dream Yoga? Is it true that the ancient masters mastered the ability to completely transfer consciousness into the worlds of dreams and live there? Create and change these worlds, thereby becoming the sole creator deities of their own universes? Isn’t our cosmos one of these worlds, created as a personal dream by one of the magicians of another universe? Eugene: Ideas about the universe as the creation of a certain Demiurge -a rebellious magician who dared to become the creator of his own world are present in many esoteric branches of world religions. You can find them in Kabbalah and Gnostic Christianity, Manichaeism and Sufism, all kinds of magical teachings and sects. According to them, the true creator of our world is not the all-good God, but an impostor who rebelled against his will. Desiring to be compared with his own creator, he created a dream-like world, where he retired to enjoy power. Its inhabitants are not only endowed with self-awareness, but also do not know about the true state of affairs, considering their ruler to be the true God. This explains the many absurdities of the world and its overflowing with suffering. Perhaps such a picture is the only logical way to reconcile monotheism with the realities of life. Apart from the inherent ability of believers to ignore the problems generated by the idea that a wise and good Creator allows the existence of evil, yoga has nothing in common with such ideas. This picture of the world has developed as an attempt to explain evil. Yoga offers a way beyond illusions. Including the illusions of Good and Evil. Gnosticism is a cosmological projection of the problems of one's own thinking. It is our mind that continually rebels against the observed order of things. Strives for greatness and power over his own kind. And, since achieving them is impossible, he creates a world of his own fantasies. Where it is removed. Today, in addition to traditional psychotropic drugs, the world of computer games has been added to his services. Modern demiurges spend their lives there. And, if the characters of virtual worlds had even a small share of self-awareness and feelings, then the fate of the inhabitants of the biblical hell would seem to them like paradise... Yoga, translated from Sanskrit, means union. Unity. Restoring lost integrity. Dream yoga is about restoring the unity of consciousness, divided into the world of the waking mind and the world of vague images of the night. That is, the purpose of dream yoga is the same as that of psychoanalysis. Restoring the unity of the psyche. Conscious access to unconscious knowledge and treasures hidden in its depths. At the same time, consciousness turns out to be something much more than we usually believe. A cosmological reality, similar to space and time, and inseparable from them. To connect with it through meditative practice during lucid sleep is the goal of yoga. At a more advanced stage, its task is the complete dissolution of boundaries between individual states of consciousness and the continuity of awareness. A yogi who has achieved perfection is equally aware of what is happening both in wakefulness and in sleep. For him, the world is no longer dissected into separate realities, but is united. Matrix of EternityMikhail: Ideas about sleep and dreams, and about reality itself, have changed significantly over thousands of years of human history. The world itself around us would seem like an incredible dream to a person of past centuries. The dream of dreamers and engineers has come true. Can we say that the world has become a dream - or at least has a nature similar to a dream? Eugene: Words about a reality similar to a dream are more than three thousand years old. The ancient authors of the Vedas and ancient philosophers, the magicians of Babylon and the Druids of the Celts likened everyday life to sleep. They described it with the Mayan term - haze, mirage. Today this word is often understood as illusion, deception. However, this significantly distorts its meaning. Maya is inseparability, a fusion or mixture of the real and the unreal, matter and magic, constancy and variability. The best analogy would be a literary text. In it, the author inextricably connected real places and circumstances created by the imagination, historical figures and fictional heroes. He put his own thoughts into the mouths and minds of real people, and made invented characters participants in real events. And all this is completely inseparable. These are the myths and legends of any people, be they biblical or Vedic narratives, Russian epics or stories of tribes lost in the jungle. There people and deities, the spirits of ancestors and intelligent animals merged intoa single mystical action that continuously manifests itself in our conventionally called reality world. From the position of psychoanalysis, a myth is the same product of the subconscious as a dream. By interpreting mythology, one can identify the psychology of the people and the events that shaped it. From the point of view of the ancient shaman, a dream is the ever-present fundamental principle of the world, its blueprint. In a dream or in a special state of trance, a person can visit this world outside of time and bring special knowledge from there. Moreover, a powerful shaman can travel consciously in the dream world and make targeted influences and changes there. Then they appear in our world, which is only a shadow or a private manifestation of the primordial world of dreams. Mikhail: If a literary text has an author who mixed reality and fiction in the proportion he needs, then who is the author of the dream? Eugene: The creators of the Vedas spoke of Maya as Lila - a divine game performed in eternity by deities and giving birth to the gods themselves. Beyond the boundaries of time, the division into past and future, cause and effect, disappears and becomes an illusion. The game reproduces itself, manifesting itself in the actions of the players. They are inseparable. Since ancient times, the sexual symbolism of a god and goddess united in an embrace has been used to describe Lila. It was a means of explaining to the archaic consciousness the principle of the unity of outer space and the joy of play, real and imaginary, in the same way as we above used the analogy of a literary text, unknown to the ancients. The concept of the mother Maya generating reality appeared millennia later in the fundamental myths of all leading religions. Maya, Maria, Miriam. Matrix. Matter. It is no coincidence that this is the name of the mother of Buddha and Dionysus, Jesus and Orpheus. The divine play of consciousness, manifested as an illusion of the material world, gives rise to reason and intellect. She nurtures it within herself and gives it experience. Having fulfilled his role, he leaves the stage. The Mind born to her becomes a new transformative force of existence. Or rather, its very source and creator. It divides the coherent single continuum of dreaming-in-waking into reality and fiction, which until this moment were one and inseparable. It is he who becomes the enlightened teacher of sleeping people, pointing out to them the lack of a genuine and solid nature in what they consider to be real. He calls the world a dream. And calls them to awaken! Armor of realityMikhail: It is the mind that is the bridge between worlds. The world of everyday life, which we consider real - and the world of primordial beings, merged in the game that eternally generates them. How can a person consciously overcome their boundaries? What dangers and traps await along the way? What kind of secret knowledge will he gain there, and how can he be brought back to our world? What power allows an initiated shaman or magician to feel at home in the dream world - and there to influence the prototypes of things and events of our world? Is it possible for us to find it? Eugene: Before going to a foreign country, it is useful to study the laws and language. Get acquainted with customs and geography. Find out about the climate, nature, dangers and attractions. Otherwise, the journey may end unpleasantly. There is a naive illusion that the so-called astral worlds are full of grace and light and are inhabited exclusively by wise and benevolent beings. It’s as if the inhabitants of the dream world have nothing better to do than help and teach goodness to any lost visitor. You might as well venture into the deep taiga or jungle. Before the unlucky traveler reaches his home, he will become the prey of countless predators. And even if he ends up somewhere, it’s not at all a fact that it will turn out to be a beautiful palace where everyone is happy to see him. Of course, it’s nice to indulge yourself with the bright dream of a good fairy tale that awaits us beyond the day. Close your eyes and fly away into a wish-fulfilling world inhabited by good wizards. Alas, these are the fantasies of adult children who have not decided to grow up. Exploring the world of dreams is a serious matter. Traveling into a dream is no less responsible than an expedition to an alien planet. A completely different one is waiting for us there.a world with fundamentally different laws, customs and dangers. When we get there in natural sleep, consciousness is surrounded by a reliable shell similar to a space suit. When do we have time to put it on? During that very period between waking and dreaming, about which we remember nothing. On the way back, we pass through it again, undergoing “disinfection” so as not to drag into our world something that has no place in it. This spacesuit, consisting of special structures of the psyche, protects the sleeping body from involvement in events experienced in a dream, turning off motor skills and sensory organs. It reliably fences us off from the threats and dangers of the world of sleep. His monsters cannot harm us. In the most extreme cases, emergency evacuation is activated and we wake up. Usually, unnecessary information is quickly erased from memory, making it almost impossible for us to remember most dreams within an hour after waking up. But we see six to eight dreams in one night! Who can boast that they are able to remember everything? And this same defense mechanism does not allow us to achieve complete awareness in a dream, similar to the one we have here. Shackles our actions and thoughts with a steel shell. In dreams, we are more spectators than full participants. Protection removes us from events and forces of an alternative reality incompatible with everyday life. If she disappeared, the world of Maya could capture the traveler forever. Then the body left in our world falls into lethargy, autism, and other forms of existence that qualify as madness. A reliable shield separates us from losing ourselves. Thanks to him, an ordinary dreamer does not have the power of a shaman to change and control his own dreams. Moreover, using the magic of controlled sleep to influence the events of reality. Playing with these things without proper preparation is more than dangerous. What is so interesting to read about on the pages of books can become a death trap in life. Especially if you apply persistence and effort, and still disable or damage your own protection. You can't become a pilot by simply reading a book about pilots and confidently sitting at the controls of a jet plane. Before looking for magical powers, it is useful to gain a sense of responsibility for your own life and common sense. Pitfalls of interpretationMikhail: Is trying to look beyond the real world a sign of a lack of common sense? A desire for death? An escape from reality? Or is it the noble instinct of knowledge that makes us human? What can a person discover beyond sleep? How will this change his life? Eugene: There is a popular misconception that behavior has a single cause. Then, by opening it, we can understand it or even change it. This is not true. In fact, any behavior, thought, feeling is multivalent. They, like the weather outside the window, have millions of reasons. Many motives and goals are present simultaneously. When we are engaged in interpretation, we arbitrarily select one of them that most closely matches our expectations. In general, interpretation says more about the interpreter than about the real state of affairs. As they say, when meeting a saint, a thief sees only his pockets... It is hardly worth being like the arrogant analysts who see in everything the desire for fame, power, or popularity with the opposite sex. Although they are undoubtedly present in one way or another in the motivation of any activity. But, not only them! Because of this, when analyzing human affairs, it is more useful to focus on higher motives. While not forgetting about the presence of everyone else. Exactly the same rule exists for dream interpretation. In the so-called “wild” psychoanalysis, which Freud opposed, the analyst identifies the most base motives and meanings of dream images. Ignoring the rest. As a result, the client remains crushed by the brutal truth about himself, which has little to do with reality, and more to do with the inner world and concepts of the analyst himself. Such analysis brings changes, not all of which will be beneficial. Genuine work with sleep, as well as with anyanother object of a person’s inner world, implies joint creativity. An integral consideration of the entire spectrum of meanings, reasons and meanings, from the most unattractive to the most sublime. Then knowledge brings benefit and development. Otherwise, this is masochistic, painful soul-searching. Mikhail: Can the search for the meaning of a dream become a path to the spiritual development of the individual? Transforming her into a new being, discovering the cosmic dimension of existence? Or is it a thing in itself, devoid of any higher meaning? Intellectual sport or fun, something like chess and crossword puzzles? Evgeniy: Without a doubt! It all depends on the motivation of the dreamer himself. If he is looking for a cure for boredom, a reason to chat, to attract attention, and seeks to reduce the level of anxiety by satisfying curiosity, then it will not be of much use. The fun seeker will reject deep interpretations because he is not ready for them. Temporarily relieved anxiety and boredom will return, crying out for a new dose of entertainment. However, much depends on the skill of the interpreter. After all, a dream, due to its mystery, attracts great interest. Working with him can be the shortest path to such depths of the inner world of a seemingly unremarkable person, which neither he himself nor those around him had any idea about. So a dream is truly the royal road to the treasures of the inner world! The process of transformation is gradual and full of discoveries. Deep down, at our core, each of us is a being full of light and the highest aspirations. In everyone, even the most worthless in appearance, there is hidden limitless potential for perfection. Due to harsh upbringing and unsuccessful interactions with the outside world, our radiant core is covered from an early age with layers of protective skin that protects us from pain and injury. We usually deal with this rough and rough surface, taking it for the true essence. The dream opens a gate in a fortress wall. Allows the dreamer's consciousness to touch his own heart. Charged with his energy and love. This is why after sleep we feel so good and exalted. Gaining conscious access to all the best in yourself, transforming the personality into a new infinitely brighter and wiser being - this is the true task of working with dreams. And it is completely solvable! Returned magicMikhail: Is a guide necessary for traveling in the world of dreams? Who is he? What are its tasks? Can a dream book play the role of a specialist? What language do dreams speak to us? Is it possible to have a common vocabulary for everyone? Or is it better for everyone to deal with their dreams individually? Is it dangerous to let a stranger into your own inner world, and won’t the process of interpretation by another person distort the very personality of the dreamer? Eugene: A guide is desirable. As with any journey through unfamiliar territory. As one gains experience and knowledge of the language of the land of dreams, a person can become his own guide. At first, it combines an archaic fear of the unknown and a natural need for information. Curiosity, the desire to know yourself, and the fear of discovering something not the most pleasant. Often this is accompanied by immaturity and the desire to shift responsibility to someone else, strong and experienced. Plus the lack of necessary skills. Nothing human is alien to each of us. So the most important task at the first stage is not the depth of immersion or the discovery of sacred secrets, but the safety of the dreamer and mutual trust between him and the guide. This is similar to learning to scuba dive or fly an airplane. Can you learn this from books? Judge for yourself…. It will be better if the guide acts as a coach rather than as a helmsman. He will not offer himself as a talking dream book - a dictionary of the language of dreams. But it will contribute to the development of relevant experience and knowledge in the dreamer himself. Skills of attentive, adequate and flexible communication with your own inner world. No translator can fully perform this function. Moreover, the trick is that in the world of dreams,Each of us has our own vocabulary! This is what the dreamer must find. The guide or trainer will only be an assistant in its preparation. The fact is that the meaning and meaning that is true for the interpreter, if it were his own dream, will be completely inadequate for the dreamer himself. This is a fundamental mistake in dream books and early psychoanalysis. They are based on the assumption that there are universal meanings of symbols. And once you decipher them once, you will be able to accurately understand any dream of any person. This is completely wrong! Here the concept of symbol is replaced by the concept of sign. A sign is a substitute for a thing. It is unambiguous and lacks the possibility of flexible interpretation. Does not depend on the context and method of reading. These are traffic signs or heraldic signs. The symbol comes from the Greek “symbolon” ​​- that which connects. This is an image that is initially ambiguous. Serving as a knot, a ligament, a thread on which an endless series of different, but at the same time somewhat related meanings are strung. These are the symbols of world religions, nature and the elements. Thick volumes have been written about them that do not contain all the variety of meanings. This is the language of dreams. His figures are symbols, but not signs! To interpret them unambiguously with the help of a book, or any external interpretation, is naive. It's like letting a stranger judge your feelings. Sometimes he will be right. But, only sometimes....Mikhail: What will a person gain who has mastered the art of working with sleep? What does he risk losing? Will he turn into an extravagant hermit, isolated from reality and lost in the labyrinths of fantasy? Is it still possible to learn to consciously manage your life and its events, to change the surrounding reality by learning to control the course of a dream? Or is this a special way of a magician, inaccessible to most of us? Evgeniy: The result of working on oneself is freedom and wisdom. The price is loss of illusions. At each new level, these words will have a deeper and deeper meaning. First, a person turns to dreams in an attempt to predict the future, gaining control over it. This need is compensation for the fear of a timid creature lost in the midst of the changing existence. The unknown future is terrifying. The dream book helps to create an illusion. Includes a self-fulfilling prophecy mechanism. What we set ourselves up for is what we get. If the result is contrary to what was predicted, it is forgotten. Or they adjust it to fit the answer. This way you can maintain yourself indefinitely in the illusion of magical omnipotence. There is little benefit in this, since self-deception does not allow you to receive reliable information about the world and your position in it. Makes any development impossible. This is a dead end and an illusion of freedom. However, with systematic work on the interpretation of dreams, on understanding one’s inner world, a person gradually realizes the nature of his fears and illusions. And - gets rid of them! Now his true needs, problems and unresolved situations appear before him. And here working with sleep allows you to find the right solutions. Receive the message of your own hidden wisdom. Realize and change the content of dreams, and through them, waking life. Relationships with people and society, social role and emotional state change and become more harmonious. The dreamer takes away from the dream an understanding of new tasks and a desire for more majestic horizons. Dreaming turns out to be the key to a happy and effective waking life. And it leads further! As internal and external problems are worked out and resolved, new tasks come to the fore. Or rather, well-forgotten old ones. That same desire for power and wisdom, knowledge of the secrets of the past and future, conscious control of fate. To discover the true magic of life. To transcending earthly destiny and transforming oneself into an entity on a cosmic scale. Now a person has the right to this. The experience of self-knowledge and techniques for working with dreams give him such an opportunity. What happens next is a matter of his own personal determination. Everything is in our hands when our feet are on a solid foundation. A castle built on the sand of illusions is doomed.