The Antecedents of the Experience of Light in Dreams

Abstract

The experience of inner light and ecstasy is widely accepted as a universal mystical experience, regardless of cultural or religious context. While one can read first-hand accounts in the historical record, the direct experience of light remains elusive for most people. This study analyzes a series of dream-based experiences of light provided by a single subject. In our analysis of 19 dreams, we pursue a process-oriented, relational analysis based on co-creative dream theory, which views the dream as an interactive experience in real time rather than a fixed product of the unconscious mind. By analyzing dreams as relational events, in which the metaphoric content emerges alongside the dreamer’s responses, we see how the dream ego influences the outcome through feelings, choices, and reactions. Through this analysis, we identify an array of subjective antecedents to the experience of light and provide a potential avenue of access to the core mystical experience.

1. Introduction

In Whitman’s Song of Myself, he speaks in intimate terms of an ecstatic mystical experience. Addressing the source of the experience as his lover, he writes:

• I mind how once we lay on such a transparent summer morning,
• How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over upon me,
• And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,
• Moreover, reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet.
• Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
• And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
• And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
• And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
• Moreover, that a kelson1 of the creation is love.

A half-century after Whitman wrote these words, the Canadian physician Richard Maurice Bucke was seized by light and ecstasy on his way home from reading Whitman and other writers with his friends. His personal experience formed the basis of his 1905 classic, Cosmic Consciousness (Bucke [1905] 2010), in which he presents dozens of similar experiences of famous and anonymous recipients.

Religions are often cited for their differences rather than their similarities. However, we know that the experience of light occupies a unique status in a variety of mystical religious traditions (Kapstein 2004). These experiences can be challenging to understand because they occur in specific cultural and religious contexts—and further, the recipients may speak of them obliquely through religious language and poetic metaphor. Inevitably, “experience and interpretation are inextricably bound up with one another (Louth 2004),” making it difficult to see whatever universal features they may contain. Nonetheless, the testimonies reveal a discernible core experience—that is, an experience of light and ecstasy that may occur in ordinary waking life, in deep meditation, in sleep and dreams, or in the liminal space between sleep and waking. Carl Jung captured the universal significance of the vision of light when he said:

The phenomenon itself, that is, the vision of light, is an experience common to many mystics, and one that is undoubtedly of the greatest significance, because in all times and places it appears at the unconditional thing, which unites in itself the greatest energy and the profoundest meaning.

(Wilhelm 2022)

1.1. The Source of the Light

The core mystical experience (Bucke [1905] 2010; Kapstein 2004; Underhill 2011) encompasses a complex state of ecstatic feelings, expansive perceptions, and an overriding sense of love, but the unifying feature is the perception of light. The color of the light may vary from white to gold to blue to black. The experience of white light seems most common, but in some cultural contexts, such as Kashmir Shaivism, blue light is considered the highest state of consciousness (Muktananda 2000). Meanwhile, many contemporary reports of lucid dreams, defined here as dreams in which the dreamer understands the experience is a dream (Van Eeden 1913), include encounters with a radiant black light within their lucid dreams (Bogzaran 2003; Powell 2022).

The source of the light in dreams and visions varies according to the spiritual tradition. Ethnographic accounts of many, but not all, indigenous traditions around the world include visions and dreams of light in association with ancestors, personal power, and spirit worlds. Some contemporary examples include a Bororo male initiate’s dream of flashes of light in Brazil (Crocker 1985 as qtd in Laughlin 2011, p. 278), a Cree woman’s vision quest dream of a “strange beam of light” as a sign of nearby spirits (Tedlock 1999), and a native Australian’s dream of transforming into a form of light while dream-traveling (Gaskin 2013). Hinduism treats the light experience as a culmination of the awakening of the kundalini energy, described metaphorically as a coiled serpent at the base of the spine. The kundalini remains dormant in most individuals until activated by spiritual practice or through shaktipat—a bestowal of grace mediated through a guru’s touch, glance (i.e., darshan), or a blessed object. The awakening of the kundalini can also trigger a variety of intense and destabilizing transitional states (Krishna 1997; Muktananda 2000) that correlate with the Western mystic’s experience of the dark night of the soul (Underhill 2011). In Ted Esser’s phenomenological analysis of experienced lucid dreamers who invited kundalini in their dreams, one of the most common visual expressions was geometric colored light patterns, as well as white or colored light (Esser 2014).

The Tibetan Buddhist tradition treats the “clear light” as the phenomenological signature of the dharmakaya—the highest of three nonphysical levels or “bodies” (Evans-Wentz 1966, 1967; Govinda 1972). Note that clarity is described metaphorically as “clear light,” but can also be experienced as various phenomenal manifestations of light in a dream, “like rainbow lights, thigles [signs], and visions of deities” (Norbu 2002, p. 90). According to this tradition, one can experience the clear light in dreams, as well as during the after-death state:

“The recognizing of the Clear Light is to be accomplished in the interval between the cessation of consciousness in this world and the arising of consciousness in the after-death state”.

(Evans-Wentz 1967, p. 234)

Their tradition emphasizes using “dream yoga”—one of six yogas of the “accelerated path” (Evans-Wentz 1967)—to cultivate one’s ability to become conscious in dreams (i.e., lucid) during one’s lifetime to prepare for the challenges in the after-death experience. Developing the capacity to become lucid in one’s dream prepares the dying person to look beyond the dream-like illusions that arise at death, which impede the soul’s emancipation from rebirth. In his Introduction to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Sir John Woodruffe describes the consummate opportunity of the after-death experience when he says the following:

If he [the disciple] has the power to die consciously, and at the supreme moment of quitting the body can recognize the Clear Light which will dawn upon him then, and can become one with it, all...bonds of illusion are broken asunder immediately: the dreamer is awakened into Reality simultaneously with the mighty achievement of recognition.

(Evans-Wentz 1966)

In historic Islam, visionary light often accompanies insight as well. Muhammed’s prophetic dreams were often filled with an otherworldly light which he described “like the dawn of morning” (Bulkeley 2008). In the 12th century, Ibn Arabii wrote of a non-dual experience during late afternoon prayer, in which he merged with an “abode of light” (Ma’ruf 2014). Three hundred years later, the Sufi mystic Shamsoddin Lahiji describes a nocturnal flying vision which revealed to him that the fundamental nature of the universe is light (Bulkeley 2008).

Historic Judaic traditions of dream interpretation were shared with Babylonian and ancient Egyptian cultures. In general, dreams were viewed not as paths for refining consciousness, as seen in Hinduism and Buddhism, but rather as a channel of communication between the divine and human realms (Mota-Rolim et al. 2020). Sometimes, the prophetic nature of these dreams was doubted, and an unfavorable interpretation could be deadly for the dreamer. In Genesis, Jacob’s son Joseph dreams of celestial figures of light—”the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me” (Bulkeley 2008, p. 130)—which resulted in his being thrown into a pit by his brothers.

Visionary light in Christian contexts is quite varied. In the New Testament, Paul attributed his vision of light on the road to Damascus to the risen Christ. Amid the blinding light, he heard, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest: It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks” (Acts 9:5–6), as if to challenge him to pursue a different course in life than persecuting the followers of Jesus. In the centuries to follow, dreams in Christianity are generally viewed with ambivalence, emerging from three sources: from on high, from somatic causes, or from the devil (Nelson 2016). Religion scholar Diana Pasulka (2017) suggests that many historic Catholic accounts of otherworldly light emerging in prayer and/or sleep was as strange and dangerous to church authorities then as modern accounts of UFOs—as balls of light, earth lights, and beams of light—are viewed today.

1.2. Purpose of This Study

One might assume that the experience of light lies beyond the capability of ordinary people. However, various historical and contemporary sources suggest that light experiences could be more available in dreams, especially if (1) one could learn to become lucid and (2) understand the challenges that typically precede these events. While there is abundant literature on how to increase the frequency of lucid dreams (Stumbrys et al. 2012; Aspy 2020; Tan and Fan 2023), little has been written on what precedes the experience of light in dreams. Fortunately, unlike waking mystical experiences, which may occur abruptly, without a clear precedent, dreams illustrate emergent metaphoric content alongside the dreamer’s subjective responses. By analyzing the relational dynamics between the dreamer and the dream content, we intend to delineate a tentative “avenue of approach” and thus provide a provisional blueprint for increasing their availability. This approach is not about manufacturing or simulating visionary experience, but rather is more in line with the ancient art of dream incubation, the ritual practice of calling or asking for clarity, insight, or visionary experience in dreams (Reed 1976) and lucid dreams (Stumbrys 2021).

2. Design

2.1. Subjects

Since the experience of light is so rare in most people’s lives, we have adopted a single-subject design (SSD) based on the long-term dream journal of the lead author. A first-person SSD aligns with the historic approach to researching exceptional dream experiences—particularly lucid dreams. For instance, Frederick Van Eeden (1913) initially introduced the modern study of lucid dreaming by analyzing 353 of his own dreams. Shortly after, Sylvan Muldoon collaborated with psychical researcher Hereward Carrington to publish The Projection of the Astral Body (Muldoon and Carrington 1929), which featured Muldoon’s experiences, most of which were “philosophically indistinguishable” (Green 1968) from lucid dreams. Then, in 1939, Oliver Fox published Astral Projection: A Record of Out-of-Body Experiences (Fox [1939] 1962), a first-person account that included several lucid dreams that he called “dreams of knowledge”. The term “lucid dream” (Van Eeden 1913) remained largely unused until the 1970s.

The tradition of first-person works continued with Sparrow’s Lucid Dreaming: Dawning of the Clear Light (Sparrow 1976), which preceded the first empirical studies of lucid dream physiology (Hearne 1978; LaBerge 1980), lucid dream induction methods (LaBerge and Rheingold 1991; Purcell 1987; Sparrow 1982), and the psychological studies of frequent lucid dreamers (Gackenbach and LaBerge 1988). First-person narratives continue to advance the popular awareness of lucid dreaming and to provide a source of hypotheses for researchers (Garfield 1979; Gillespie 2019; Kelzer 1987; Pita 2015; Powell 2022; Waggoner 2008).

While one might view first-person narratives and SSD’s as inferior to the usual standards of empirical research, such as accounts can challenge existing paradigms by introducing anomalous phenomena that fall outside the range of “normal science” (Kuhn 1962). Even in consciousness studies, there is a taboo against the subjective (Wallace 2004). Anthropologist Jack Hunter (2023) calls these phenomena “the deep weird” and describes them as “experiences that push, and often far exceed, the boundaries of what dominant models of Western science and culture allow for, and yet are relatively commonly reported worldwide” (p. 7). Historian of religions Jeffrey Kripal, likewise, advocates for the humanities, especially religious studies, to stop bracketing out the anomalous and to accept more of the transcendence and paradoxes that come with real human lived experience, as reported (2022). In further support of our single-subject design, Windt (2013) observes that enlisting advanced dreamers as subjects may be the only way to study and aggregate infrequent dream phenomena. Domhoff (2017) also asserts that first-person dream journals provide access to high-quality data that are unlikely to emerge in more controlled laboratory settings. In the cross-disciplinary field of lucid dreaming research, a stronger accounting of the diversity of subjective experience is called for if an accurate neurophenomenology is to emerge (Mota-Rolim et al. 2010).

Regarding the value of SSDs, Catagnus et al. (2022) observe that “SSDs enable high-quality research in both basic and applied settings, as well as in populations that are too small, heterogeneous, or atypical to constitute a group in random”. Given that dream data are virtually impossible to access directly, long-term dream journals from single subjects provide a valid if not necessary, starting point for establishing the stability and continuity of diverse dream content.

Spiritual-Biographical Sketch. Sparrow, age 72, was raised Methodist, but began studying Eastern religions and meditating at 19. It was then that he began to study Jungian psychology and experienced his first lucid dream of light. However, he did not know what to call the experience, since in 1971 very little had been published in the popular literature (Green 1968; Tart 1972). He has since continued to observe a lifelong daily practice of concentrative meditation (Puryear and Thurston 1975) based on Christ-oriented affirmations and various Hindu and Buddhist mantras.

2.2. Approach to Analysis

Since our data are derived from a single subject, we cannot make comparisons and arrive at common themes that might support an essentialist perspective on religious experiences. Thus, our approach remains agnostic with regard to possible universal or common features. Nonetheless, in several related studies of long-term journal data, Schredl (2024) achieves a quasi-objective stance toward his own dreams by (1) applying a quantitative analysis and (2) avoiding interpretive assessments of the dream reports. While our single-subject design involves a non-quantitative approach to evaluating the 19 dreams, we follow Schredl’s (2024) example by avoiding traditional interpretative assessments. As an alternative, we have employed a flexible analysis of each dream based on co-creative dream theory (Rossi 1972; Sparrow 2013; Sparrow and Thurston 2010; Ullman 1969), which views the dream as an indeterminate, interactive process that unfolds in real-time, contingent upon the dream ego’s responses to the emergent content. The paradigm that we apply to a single subject’s dreams parallels Kapstein’s approach in analyzing cross-cultural constructed views of the experience of light as a reciprocal, unfolding dynamic.

What is constructed can at best be described as a malleable field, in which received tradition and the lived experiences of individuals enter into dialogue and through their dialogue form and reform one another.

(Kapstein 2004, p. 83)

This constructionistic approach mirrors our own orientation by refraining from making conclusions about universal features or the underlying nature of the light, but our approaches do not deny a common substrate. By focusing on what we can know—that the dreamer enters into dialogue with the emergent dream content, forming and reforming one another in an ongoing exchange—we hope to evolve an understanding that is essentially and inextricably relational in its orientation. While our co-creative analysis avoids making interpretive conclusions, we conduct an analysis of each dream, nonetheless, and believe that it achieves a level of objectivity that is not possible through traditional dream content analysis. The second author further serves as a check against self-deception in these analyses, while holding up a supportive postcritical hermeneutics of dreaming (Bulkeley 2001) by privileging the dreamer’s perspective on his own dreams, focusing on the details of the dreams, connecting the dreams to the dreamer’s waking life, and remaining open to surprise.

Our analyses focused on four dimensions of CDT:

(1)

We summarized the “process narrative” (Sparrow and Thurston 2022), also referred to as the “theme” (Thurston 1978) or “non-interpretive summary” (Schredl 2015, 2019).

(2)

We highlighted any conflict or problem that confronted the dreamer.

(3)

We analyzed the dreamer’s responses (Sparrow 2014) and concomitant changes in the dream content.

(4)

We drew process parallels between dreams, where indicated, to establish common antecedents to the experience of light.

We defined a “light dream” as one in which the dreamer experiences the light “within” himself and/or visible in the dreamscape. The light may be approaching as if to become interiorized, but as we will see, the culmination of such encounters can apparently be thwarted by non-facilitative dream ego responses. We have limited our study to 19 dreams, each involving the light becoming an interior experience or exhibiting movement toward that end.

3. Results

In a standard quantitative study, we would present the results and then comprehensively discuss our findings. In this study, however, we performed an independent analysis and discussion of each dream to identify and integrate emergent themes.

3.1. Initial Dreams

In his first experience of the light, our subject, who was 19 then, was surprised and unprepared for the experience.

[1] I have come home from school. I become aware that I am dreaming as I stand outside a small building with large black double doors on its eastern side. I approach them to enter. As soon as I open them, a brilliant white light hits me in the face. Immediately, I am filled with intense feelings of love. I said several times, “This can’t be a dream!” The interior resembles a small chapel or meeting room. It has large windows overlooking barren land like the Great Plains. I think this is somehow real in a three-dimensional sense. Everything is amazingly clear, and the colors are brilliant. No one is with me, yet someone needs to be there to explain the sense of purpose that permeates the atmosphere. At one point, I walk, holding a crystal rod (or wand) on which a flat, spinning crystal circle is poised. The light passes through it and is beautiful.

The process narrative: The dreamer enters a familiar place and experiences a dramatic elevation of positive feelings and awareness. He remains alone throughout, without anyone to explain the meaning of the experience. As for the dreamer’s response, he merely opened a door and entered a room! However, this simple act might have been more critical than it seems. We are reminded of a modern spiritual teacher, Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008), who was once asked how to describe enlightenment. Speaking as an embodiment of enlightenment, he said, “I am like a light in a room. All you have to do is to enter the room”. While the dreamer’s response seemed simple and natural, the dreamer had begun meditating daily for several months before this dream. He was not yet consciously seeking the light and was thus surprised by the initial euphoric dream.

This unexpected breakthrough in the early spiritual journey aligns with Underhill’s (2011) model of a mystic’s development, in which the initial illumination experience arrives without justification or precedent. In the myth of the Holy Grail (Jung and Von Franz 1986), Parsifal achieves some early success as a bumbling knight before stumbling upon the Grail Castle without knowing of its significance. He enjoys a sumptuous feast prepared in his honor, sees the Grail paraded before him in all its splendor, and then awakens the following day only to find that the Castle has disappeared. After that, he spent many years searching fruitlessly for it. Perhaps our dreamer, too, experienced his initial light dream simply because of largely unintentional efforts; regardless, he awoke intent on recapturing the initial rapture, but without clear direction.

3.2. Initiation Tests

Following this breakthrough, our dreamer began having more complex dreams of light characterized not by effortless breakthroughs but by various problems or ordeals that had to be resolved. Before examining a few dreams of light with problematic antecedents, it is essential to review a brief dream that sets the stage to appreciate the following dreams and the challenges that emerge.

[2] I become aware that I am dreaming and decide to search for the white light. I see it in several places as it shines through the form of every ordinary object around me. I see a bicycle shining, so I concentrate on the shimmer, hoping it will expand into a full-blown experience of radiance. However, as soon as I do this, the shimmering disappears, and the bicycle becomes ordinary again. I repeat this effort several times, but the light dims each time I contemplate it. I am frustrated, when I notice a woman approaching. She walks up and says, “You must first learn to love the form before you can see the light within it”.

The process narrative: The dreamer searches for something, but it eludes him. He is told to appreciate the outward appearance of things to reach his goal. The woman asserts that the dreamer must seek the light, not directly, but through the world of mediating forms. Of course, at first, it is unclear which avenues will provide access to what one seeks. Therefore, unsure of what he should do next, our dreamer considered seeking a guru a few months after his initial light experience. One of his friends spoke so passionately about the impact of following a particular guru that he also considered becoming a devotee. However, before he could make that decision, he dreamt of going to see the guru.

[3] I have gone to see the guru in India. I wait in line, and finally, it is my turn to visit with him. He smiles but says nothing, waiting. Not sure of what to say, I finally say, “Master…” He immediately interrupts me and asks, “Who is master?” I conclude that he is saying that he is not my Master and that perhaps Jesus is my Master. Suddenly, a woman enters the room and invites me to join her in performing a yoga asana, the cobra. We sit on the floor, facing each other. I stretch into the position, and the white light awakens. As the vibration becomes more and more intense, I can see the guru smiling and nodding through a cloud of light.

The process narrative: The dreamer looks for someone to guide him but is told that there is another avenue that he should pursue. He engages with another guide and experiences fulfillment. As for the dream ego’s responses, he accepts the guru’s rejection but remains engaged with the unfolding process. He could have asked more questions or left in resignation, but he followed an implicit course of action and was then overcome by the light experience.

Upon awakening, the dreamer was puzzled by the guru’s response. Did he mean to say there was another teacher for him—Jesus or someone else? Did the presence of the yoga teacher indicate that perhaps she represented his guru? Did the guru mean to imply that the light within himself was the Master? Or, possibly, was the guru implying that all of these were true?

Shortly after having this dream [3], our dreamer experienced the light in the personified form of Jesus. It was so impactful that the dreamer concluded that the guru had been referring to Jesus as his “master”.

[4] Aware that I am dreaming, I am flying around inside a new building with my friend, Mark. We are praying for or consecrating the building. At one point, I see Mark standing in a doorway at the back of the auditorium, talking to someone standing beyond the threshold. I know it is Jesus! I anxiously walk toward the door, hoping he will still be there. I pass through the door and look toward where I assume he will be. At first, I am only able to see bright white light. However, then I can see a man in the midst of the light. I stand silent and awed by his presence. I feel great love emanating from him, but I feel sternness as well. He finally asks, “Are you ready to leave the earth yet?” I realize that he is asking if I am ready to die. Startled by the implications of his question, I say, “No”. He says, “Then go out and do what you know to do”.

The process narrative: The dreamer becomes aware of an opportunity to encounter someone of significance and approaches the opportunity without hesitation. When he encounters the person, the person asks a question to which the dreamer responds. As for the dreamer’s responses, he initially pursues contact with Jesus without hesitation. Whereas he opened the door to the light in the initial dream, the dreamer walked through an open door in this dream. Then, when Jesus asks the question, the dreamer immediately knows where he stands and answers unequivocally. Indeed, the brief dream establishes contact with Jesus through the dreamer’s consistent intention and then assists the dreamer in becoming committed to doing “what he needs to do” in life.

It is intriguing that the dreamer assumes that Jesus is posing a life-or-death decision. The exchange can also be interpreted as Jesus offering the dreamer a transcendent journey. One can never know what would have happened if the dreamer had agreed to “leave the earth,” but the exchange resulted in the dreamer’s commitment to pursuing a path of right action.

Following this dream, the dreamer began to relate to the light through the personhood of Jesus and, for almost three decades, pursued a Christian mystical path while continuing his study of Eastern religions. A brief dream of light confirmed his commitment to viewing the light as a person.

[5] I am standing in the doorway of my father’s business, looking to the south, when I see a brilliant light descending. A voice says, “You need to learn to perceive this in three dimensions”. As I look more closely at the orb of light, it transforms into the luminous figure of Jesus. He begins to cross the street with hands outstretched. I meet him in the middle of the street, reaching out and taking his hands. Our eyes meet as I awaken.

The process narrative: The dreamer becomes aware of an approaching presence and is encouraged to view it differently. He approaches it and makes contact. The dreamer’s responses are simple but facilitative. He changes his perspective, meets Jesus halfway, takes his hands, and then meets his gaze. The dream shows how difficult it can be to entertain the presence of higher power. We will observe our dreamer’s characteristic forms of resistance in a few of the following dreams.

Significantly, neither [4] nor [5] involve an experience of interiorized light. Instead, the dreamer perceived the light externally as a personal embodiment of higher power. Jesus thereafter appeared in our subject’s dreams several times. Looking back, the identification of Jesus with the light during the middle years of his life shifted his focus away from a purely transcendental or impersonal communion with the light to a relationship with an embodiment of that light. During that time, relationships with family, friends, and work also became more important; thus, the personification of higher power seemed to coincide with his willingness to “do what he needed to do” in the world of “form”.

When Jesus stands in the light and sternly confronts the dreamer, a sense of personal obligation and accountability enters the picture. The relationship is no longer only about receiving something but also about serving something. He had searched for someone to guide him but had not answered the question, “Who is master?” until he encountered Jesus in the light.

While service to a guru or spiritual guide might seem regressive or even infantile to some, Wilber (1996, 2007) draws on Hindu tradition, in which the personalization of the divine represents the “initiation of the sixth chakra”—a possibly temporary, but necessary stage of development. This devotion can take two directions, depending on the spiritual tradition: (1) as a way to receive God’s grace in a theistic system such as Christianity, or (2) as a step toward awakening to one’s true nature in a nontheistic tradition such as Hinduism (Muktananda 2000) or Buddhism (Govinda 1972).

The Grail legend (Jung and Von Franz 1986) anticipates this development. In Parcifal’s first vision of the Grail as a young man, he fails to ask a crucial question: whom does the Grail serve? He is given three opportunities but never speaks. These words would have established his willingness to serve the Grail King, but in his rapturous swoon, Parsifal let the opportunity pass. Years later, after becoming aware of his mistake and performing a variety of heroic deeds, he found his way back to the Grail Castle, where he signified his commitment to serving the Grail King by asking the crucial question. Interestingly, Parsifal’s success immediately preceded the Grail King’s death and Parsifal’s ascendancy to leadership, perhaps resolving the East–West division over whether the endpoint of our journey is to serve God or to become the one we have served. Maybe the answer is “both”.

3.3. Encountering Resistance

It may be easier to experience the light than to sustain a relationship with it in the larger context of our lives. As we know from countless stories of well-meaning spiritual individuals, all kinds of obstacles arise to thwart a commitment to a higher course of action (Underhill 2011). Our subject experienced a “dream of failure” shortly after his initial dreams of light, a few days before his 21st birthday.

[6] I dream it is time to reveal my purpose in life to my parents. It is just before dawn as I ask them to follow me out onto the driveway of my childhood home. I raise my hands over my head and begin to chant. Lightning arches across the dark sky, and when I lower my arms, it strikes the ground explosively nearby. As I do, light fills my vision. I repeat this gesture several times! Meanwhile, my parents are cowering behind me, obviously disturbed by the demonstration. Suddenly, my father picks up a lance and hurls it into my back. I fall to the ground, dying. My parents approach and bend over me with fear and alarm in their eyes. I say, “I was really your son. But I am the son of the unborn son, who is still to come”.

The process narrative: The dreamer decides to reveal an essential truth to those he loves, but it provokes a reaction that ends the display. He knows the process will continue and communicates his conviction to those who resist it. Concerning the dreamer’s responses to this dream, he shows courage and conviction in revealing his purpose to his parents. Then, when his parents attempt to defeat him, he accepts the temporary setback while asserting his commitment to his journey. The dreamer did not understand his words at the end of the dream, but they gave him hope that he would continue to progress despite his failure.

The dreamer’s experience suggests that the activation of the light and its enhanced capabilities can trigger reactions from those who might be threatened by such presumption or, conversely, from aspects of oneself that might resist the burden of a more profound calling. For instance, we know from Underhill’s research (2011) that some mystics face severe personal and interpersonal ordeals on the heels of their initial illumination experiences. The dream indicates two things: The light comes in response to a willingness to embrace one’s calling, but not without provoking deep reactions. Such dreams can prepare us to accept the inevitable challenges that may accompany the process.

The following dream reveals that the dreamer must resist the pressure from others and assert his sense of timely action to facilitate the culmination of the light.

[7] I seem to be a member of an indigenous community. My friend has just died. I know I must pay my respects by visiting the funeral pyre and praying over his body. I have not done this yet, and my wife has become impatient. I decide that I need to go on retreat first. I withdraw into the desert for a period before returning to the village. Then I go to the funeral pyre and hold my hands over my friend’s body. As I pray for him, there is an explosion, and suddenly, his body and I are shooting into the sky from the energy of the explosion. Then, it is all over, and I am lying on the ground alone. As the sun sets, I hear a voice say, “He who heals himself can then heal others, and then comes the light”. At that moment, I am blinded by white light, and I awaken in ecstasy.

The process narrative: Someone feels pressure to fulfill an obligation, resists the pressure to make necessary preparations, and then fulfills it. Concerning the dreamer’s responses, he feels obliged to pay his respects but must resist his wife’s pressure to discharge his obligation before he is ready. Again, we can see these demands as both interpersonal and intrapersonal: The dreamer may face external judgment and the prospect of internalized guilt as he responds to a spiritual calling. However, when the dreamer is ready and returns to fulfill his sacred task, he surrenders fully to the moment, and the light arises in response to his self-care and timely service. In retrospect, the dreamer realized that “doing what he knew to do” involved timely and appropriate action.

In the following brief dream, one can see that the light may awaken instantly in response to right action, without apparently involving anything else.

[8] I am with R.A., my childhood friend. She is angry with me over something and surprises me by trying to hit me. I block her hand and then reach out to embrace her. I say, “You are the emotional, the intuitive. I am the thinking, the rational. But together, we serve the same father”. At that point, light bursts into my awareness, and ecstatic feelings pour through me as I awaken.

The process narrative: The dreamer faces someone else’s displeasure and, instead of reacting, expresses an attitude that respects and reconciles their differences. The dreamer’s responses are twofold: he resists the attack but then embraces the assailant. Of course, we do not know what may have transpired beforehand in the dreamer’s life or what the dreamer may have forgotten in the dream. Nonetheless, one is reminded again of the message, “You must first love the form to see the light within it”. While seeing anything positive in such an attack is difficult, the dreamer nonetheless yields to the “form” of the woman’s emotion.

The co-creative paradigm (Sparrow 2013; Sparrow and Thurston 2010) permits us to view this dream through a relational lens by treating the dreamer’s real-time responses as the most critical dimension of the dream. It also reminds us that dreamers typically act unreflectively and experience predictable outcomes. These responses can be seen as “chronic adaptive responses” (Sparrow 2014) that once served the dreamer in resisting, if not surviving, harsh relational events. Understanding the adaptive function of such responses can aid the therapist or dream worker in initially validating the client/dreamer before gently challenging the usefulness of such reactions in current circumstances. This level of dreamer-focused relational analysis becomes especially valuable whenever the dreamer unwittingly resorts to behaviors that thwart the hidden potentials in their dreams. In this brief dream, however, one can see something remarkable—that the dreamer’s responses alone can unleash the radiance usually obscured by otherwise “justifiable” reactions to dream scenarios.

Sometimes, the light appears embedded in the imagery of an outwardly ordinary dream. The dreamer may overlook or avoid it in the context of a natural setting. For instance, a client once shared a dream in therapy in which he walked down a dark hallway and came to a crossing hallway. To his left was a bright white light illuminating the hallway, and to his right, only darkness. Intimidated by the brightness of the light, he reflexively turned right and continued into the darkness, unaware that he may have missed a profound experience. If he had been lucid, he might have turned toward the light in recognition of the opportunity, but the non-lucid dreamer did the “reasonable thing”. In the conversation about the dream, the therapist raised the possibility that, based on his experience, the client may have been on the verge of having a profoundly fulfilling experience. Regardless of whether the client ever succeeded in communing with the light (since the therapist has lost touch with him), he was thereafter aware of the possibility.

Similarly, a woman—who had previously experienced the light in dreams—dreamed she was looking at the night sky and saw a golden crescent of light. She inspected it closely and concluded that it was a banana! She might have avoided this conclusion if she had been lucid, but she turned away from the light, assuming it was nothing of value. The Tibetan Buddhists refer to this embedded or symbolized presentation of the light as its “secondary aspect”, which can easily escape the dreamer’s notice (Evans-Wentz 1967).

Dreamers can also become fascinated by and even attached to the light in its “secondary aspect”. When our dreamer was in his twenties, for instance, he began encountering brilliantly lit UFOs in his dreams and became fascinated by them. He thought perhaps they indicated that extraterrestrials may have contacted him in his dreams! When he enthusiastically told his mentor about his UFO dreams, the mentor abruptly said, “Why settle for that?” Surprised and slightly annoyed that his mentor was not as impressed as he was, our dreamer nonetheless understood that he was failing to perceive the true nature of the dream UFOs. This approach may seem contradictory to the message that “you must first love the form,” but the mentor knew that our dreamer had become attached to experience. After that, he was able to recognize the UFOs on several occasions as a metaphoric presentation of the light. This personal association of cosmic light, UFOS, and supernatural entities emerging through powerful dreams has been noted cross-culturally (Kripal 2022). Pasulka (2023) also reports that many contemporary UFO experiencers disclose unusual dreams after the event, including waking dreams and lucid dreams.

Knowing that the light can break through in dreams with a slight change in the dreamer’s attitude or perspective can underscore the importance of working with a mentor or dream worker who can recognize these veiled opportunities and bring them to the dreamer’s attention. Of course, becoming lucid during the dream can allow the dreamer to perceive the light more quickly in real-time. However, instead of that, a counselor can work with dream “failures” by encouraging the dreamer to imagine different responses and outcomes to the original dream presentation. Indeed, the practice of “dream reliving” (Sparrow 1982, 2013; Sparrow and Thurston 2010) can presumably increase the likelihood that the dreamer will respond differently in future dreams.

After our dreamer heeded his mentor’s admonition “not to settle” for the light in its veiled or secondary aspect, formless orbs of light began appearing instead. The mere appearance of an orb would usually stimulate lucidity, and then he would reach out to the light in recognition and expectancy. However, to his surprise, the light would often withdraw as if to await a more appropriate response. Unbeknownst to the dreamer, his enthusiasm prevented him from fully surrendering to its presence. The following dream underscores the importance of surrendering to it.

[9] I enter a church and know that I am expected to speak. The congregation is singing hymn #33 from a red hymnal. While they go through the usual preliminary exercises, I go outside to gather myself. I am worried and afraid because I don’t know what I will say. I sit down in the grass and suddenly come up with a topic that feels right—“The Way of Surrender”.

At this point, I look up in the eastern sky and see a giant orb of white light many times the size of the moon. I realize that I am dreaming. I yell out in joy, knowing it is coming for me. As soon as I do, the light withdraws into the sky as if it is awaiting a more appropriate response on my part. I know that I must turn my eyes away and trust. As I do, the light descends. As it approaches, I hear a woman say, “You’ve done well reflecting this light within yourself. But now it must be turned outward”. The air becomes charged, and the ground is brilliantly lit. The top of my head begins to prickle and be warmed by the light. I awaken.

The process narrative: The dreamer faces an obligation but does not feel prepared to fulfill it. He withdraws to consider his task and arrives at a solution. Regarding the dreamer’s responses, he is initially willing to deliver his talk but then becomes doubtful about his readiness. The dreamer withdraws temporarily from the task at hand to ponder and prepare for the task. He chooses a topic that feels right–surrender–which resolves his worry about his obligation and opens him to receiving the light.

The light’s retreat in this dream and several similar dreams prompted our dreamer to reflect on how his attachment to the experience, once again, prevented him from surrendering to the culmination of the light experience. However, other barriers to the experience appeared in our subject’s dreams in the form of characters who interrupt the dreamer’s engagement with the approaching light and signify attitudes that stand in the way of connection with the light. In the following two dreams, for example, our dreamer experienced interruptions by the same person whose personality characteristics informed him of limitations within himself.

[10] I am viewing caves in a rock wall from across a canyon. A golden white light emerges from one cave and begins floating toward me. I know it is an ancient enlightened being, so I sit down and meditate, hoping to experience communion with it. The light gets so close that I start to feel it. However, suddenly, my friend B. appears from behind me and asks, “What’s happening?” I try to get him to go away, but it is too late. The light disappears with my irritation.

[11] A couple of weeks later, I am dreaming and see a bell-shaped UFO approaching—glowing with golden white light and bearing the image of the Sphinx. I know it is the light, so I sit down and meditate, hoping to receive it. As it descends, its energy becomes palpable. Just before it lands a few feet from me, I hear my friend B. again from behind me say, “What are you doing?” Frustrated, I ask him to wait, but it’s too late. The light disappears.

The process narratives: The dreamer becomes aware of a momentous opportunity and prepares to receive it, only to become irritated by the invasive presence of someone unengaged in the process. Concerning the dreamer’s responses, his reaction to his friend’s intrusion seems justifiable but, in retrospect, represents the most significant problem: he could have welcomed his friend or ignored him momentarily, but the dreamer allowed his irritation to ruin the moment. Fortunately, the co-creative paradigm shines the light squarely on the dreamer’s reaction, at least initially, so that he can assume responsibility for its impact on the dream. Of course, it was also helpful to explore what the friend represented to him, both literally and as an aspect of himself. Upon reflection, our dreamer realized that B. had largely abandoned his spiritual practice and tended to be rather negative, as well. Thus, B.’s presence as a disruptive influence helped the dreamer become aware of and address his own deficiencies.

The following dream of light underscores a deep division within our dreamer and the power of surrender in opening him to a higher perspective.

[12] I am the prisoner of the devil, along with a crowd of other people. The devil appears as an ordinary man who is very powerful, cold, and brutish. We are free to walk around, but the understanding is that there is no escape from his power. Even so, a woman and I try to escape while he is distracted. It is nighttime, and we run across a lighted expanse of lawn toward an area that is not lit by the light. As I run, a voice says, “If you go further, you will fall into a well”. I stop abruptly, not knowing what to do. Then, I see a shadow creep past me, alerting me to the devil’s approach. Feeling powerless, I turn around, drop to the ground, and say, “Lord have mercy!” However, instead of seeing the devil, I see a woman clothed in white, surrounded by light. She walks up, bends down, and touches my forehead. Immediately, I am infused with light and ecstasy, and I know that I have been healed. The light pours through me for some time before subsiding as I awaken in bed.

The process narrative: Someone feels trapped by a negative influence and takes steps to free himself, but his effort creates a second problem that puts the dreamer in a no-win situation. By surrendering further effort, the problem is resolved through an unanticipated intervention. In this case, one can see how formulating the process narrative assists the dreamer in looking beyond the high drama of this dream and considering his response to the problem. Indeed, the dreamer’s initial conflict avoidance and eventual surrender become the pivotal responses determining this dream’s outcome.

The woman in the light does not champion the dreamer’s flight from the devil: she, or the light, transcends or heals the division. The thesis that emerges from these experiences is that the recognition and acceptance of one’s own divided condition facilitates an intervention from a “higher” or nondual perspective. The dreamer’s apparent role is “simply” to acknowledge it and realize that avoiding the problem only makes it worse. His awareness of his divided condition and his sense of powerlessness paradoxically facilitates an intervention beyond himself that resolves the conflict.

Another dream—again, a nonlucid dream—illustrates the premise that the conflict within us can only be resolved by a higher or nondual level of consciousness.

[13] I am with Mike on the streets of a Mexican border town. It is evening, and we run into an attractive woman who may be a prostitute, but we are not sure. We flirt with her and make arrangements to get together later that evening. Just at that moment, I notice my father standing nearby. He looks stern as if to express his judgment of me. I am still trying to figure out what to do or to say. At that moment, there is an explosion to the east. I see that an orb of white light has appeared about 100 yards away, hovering above the ground. I yell to my father to look at the light. I then see his face is rapt with wonder and illuminated by the light. We stand together, transfixed by the sight. The orb approaches us and passes slowly over us. Again, there is an explosion, and the orb reappears to the east of us. It is so powerful that it begins to attract everything toward it. I feel the wind becoming so powerful that I lose my footing and rush upward into the light until there is nothing left of the dream but light and a sense of intense love and fulfillment.

The process narrative: In pursuing his desires, the dreamer becomes aware of conflicting viewpoints resolved by turning his attention to something that can transcend or unite the differences. Concerning the dreamer’s responses, he initially expresses a willingness to pursue the fulfillment of his sexual desires with the woman but then feels exposed and rebuked by his father’s presence. Whether his father represents his actual father, a part of him who stands in judgment of him, or both, the dream initially provides no solution between these competing ideals. However, within the crucible of this apparently hopeless division, the light appears again as the unexpected solution that unites or supersedes the conflict. It seems that the key to the dream’s resolution is, once again, a subtle shift: he turns away from the conflict between himself and his father and instead recognizes the unifying influence of the light.

In the opening line of Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri wrote, “In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost”. At a time when our dreamer was in his fifties, the dreams with Jesus gradually come to an end, and our dreamer was struggling without a clear sense of direction. In the context of this rather dark period, he had a dream of light that restored a sense of hope and agency.

[14] While still living in Virginia, I dream of being back at my childhood home in South Texas. It is late at night when I go out in the backyard and look eastward toward the Gulf of Mexico. A warm wind blows from the southeast, and I know that it will be calm by the morning, making for ideal conditions for fly fishing on the Laguna Madre, 50 miles to the east. I see a full moon through the trees as I look up at the sky. Then, I see another orb of light beside the moon. How can this be? I wonder. Is it the sun? Is it another moon? I am puzzled. Then I realize that I am dreaming. As I come to this awareness, the two orbs start moving together. I lay down on the grass and meditate on the light, knowing that what I perceive is the eternal light, not the moon or the sun.

As the two lights join, they become a larger orb of white light upon which a more brilliant white star is superimposed. The new body of light now appears behind thick clouds, but a tunnel opens through the clouds, giving me a clear view of the light.

Then, to my surprise, the new combined light pulsates, and a shimmering light comes down through the tunnel—down to where I lie on the grass and enters my chest. As it does, I am overwhelmed by a sense of love. Then I hear a voice say, “You have done well with this”.

Then it is morning in the dream, and it seems that I have awakened from the dream. I am now with my sister and ex-wife, sitting in the grass near where I had received the light. I tell them about the dream and then realize that it is late in the morning and that I must leave for the Laguna Madre. I consider asking if it is okay, but then I realize it is my choice to make. So, I say nothing more and leave alone.

The process narrative: The dreamer becomes aware that conditions are suitable for a new course of action but wonders if he is free to pursue it. After receiving an ambiguous message of support, he commits to independent action. The dreamer’s responses in this dream are subtle, so one might look to the visual content as an indication of what the dream ego facilitates or allows itself to perceive. After all, within the co-creative paradigm, the dreamer’s subjectivity and the evolving dream imagery are viewed as continuously tethered and reciprocally influencing each other. This paradigm can also be seen in Douglas Hollans’s self-scape dreams, which “reflect back to the dreamer how his or her current organization of self relates various parts of itself to its body, and to other people and the world” (Hollans 2003). With this lens, the light could be seen as a constantly updated snapshot of the dreamer’s cognitive–emotional process. In the initial phase, the light appears as two separate sources of light that become one. This coalescence of the lights may have indicated the dreamer’s acceptance of the underlying unity in the division of his life and surrendering fully to it. The words he heard were puzzling, but perhaps the voice acknowledged this reconciliation.

We have seen how experiencing the light as a person may coincide with focusing on “doing what you know to do” or grounding one’s spiritual life in relationships and right action (Wilber 1996, 2007). With this context, in addition to viewing the light as an embodiment of higher power, our dreamer once dreamt of the light as the soul of his unborn son.

[15] L. and I are outside at night. I look up and see a light moving from east to west overhead. I point and say, “Look, a shooting star!” However, it stops and begins to fall toward the earth as a brilliant white feather spins around as it descends. As it nears the ground, it expands into an orb of white light that hovers about 20 feet off the ground. I understand that it is the soul of my unborn child. As it approaches us and passes directly overhead, it sends a shaft of white light that enters my chest and overwhelms me with love. As the experience subsides, I turn to her and ask, “Did you experience that?” L. seems puzzled, not knowing what I am talking about.

The process narrative: The dreamer becomes aware of something momentous and points it out to someone else. The event intensifies and conveys an experience of love, of which the second person remains unaware. Concerning the dreamer’s responses, he first becomes aware of the light and then opens himself to receive it. This might seem trivial, but we have observed how the dream ego can resist or become overly attached to the presentation of the light. Once again, the dreamer’s attitude of receptivity is significant, considering the challenge posed by this powerful presence. The partner’s obliviousness may point to the interpersonal problems created by such deep communion and allude to aspects of the dreamer that remain oblivious to the light’s immanence.

Based on his feelings during the dream, our dreamer felt that he had somehow communed with the soul of his unborn child, bringing new depth to the theme from the dreamer’s light dream [6], in which he declares to his father, “I am the son of the unborn son, who is still to come”. This time, rather than being painfully struck by a lance in the chest while struggling with the theme of separation from his parents, the dreamer receives a shaft of light in the chest that brings overwhelming love. The light itself has transformed from dangerous lightning to one with life-giving powers. Given his difficulty in receiving the light in various “failure” dreams, he surmised that experiencing the light as his future son helped him overcome whatever resistance he might have had.

3.4. Death as a Catalyst

As we will see in the following two dreams, dreams of light sometimes commence with presenting a wounded condition that needs to heal before the light can appear. Like the Fisher King in the Grail legend—whose wound would not heal—one may labor under a psychological wound that requires a higher order or spiritual intervention. The following dream depicts an emotional wound that needs healing.

[16] I seem to be a little girl, not myself, in the dream. I have suffered a deep emotional wound from the past and need healing. A medicine man appears and cups his hands over my pubic area as if providing protection. We suddenly move into total darkness, and Edgar Cayce is holding me. I know that Cayce is healing me in the darkness. Then it is morning, and the little girl has transformed into a falcon, and I am myself. The falcon hunts with me for three days before I remove her jesses and set her free.

Then, I returned to the area later with a friend and tried to spot the falcon. A speck appears above the horizon and moves toward us. As it gets closer, I see that it is a giant bee. I turn and run from it, but it follows closely behind me, saying repeatedly, “Let me give you light! Your parents have left you without light. Let me give you light”. Afraid of the bee’s sting, I try to evade it and awaken in fear. Remembering the bee’s words, I immediately realize I have foolishly resisted an immense opportunity. So, I sit up in bed and pray for another opportunity to receive the bee’s gift.

Then, after lying down and drifting off, I find myself again with Edgar Cayce, who begins talking to me about how some people cling to “the futility of keeping and bearing arms”. He seems to be referring to me, but I am not sure.

Then I am standing with my friend Mark at night atop a grassy hill. I tell him, “There once was ghetto here!” Then, I see a pinpoint of white light moving across the western sky. I point to it and say, “Look, a meteorite!” However, then, it turns and begins to move toward us, pulsating as it comes and sending tendrils of light in all directions. As it approaches, the light fills the sky and obliterates my view of the landscape until it reaches me. I throw my arm up reflexively, but the wall of light hits me. I awaken in my bed and cannot see anything but light. Momentarily, I think the house is on fire, but then I realize the light is within me.

The process narrative: The dreamer becomes aware of a problem, submits to someone’s help, and experiences fulfillment. In searching to recapture the experience, the dreamer becomes aware of a second problem and resolves it with someone’s help. This impactful dream provides a detailed portrayal of various emotional, relational, and metaphorical antecedents of the light experience; it deserves a more extensive analysis than we can give here. While our subject had no idea what the wound referred to, the dream ego/little girl somehow knew that a problem existed. This awareness alone activates a process that unfolds through various relational exchanges, eventually culminating in the experience of light. Rossi (1972) pointed out in his groundbreaking work on co-creative dream theory that personality development inevitably begins with becoming aware of something unacceptable in the dream, which precipitates a crisis for the status quo self. He tracked this process with a single patient from her initial nightmares through discernible stages of avoidance, confrontation, dialogue, and, eventually, integration. Along the same line, Ullman (1969) theorized that the function of dreaming is to become aware of and to integrate the “intrusive novelty” of the dream content, which can be virtually anything that needs integration.

The dreamer submitted to another person’s intervention without fear, which is significant, given the little girl’s vulnerability. This surrender facilitated a harmonious relationship with the falcon, a metaphor that embodied everything wild, fierce, and free to be itself.

Unsurprisingly, the dreamer wishes to reclaim the experience with the falcon, but it assumes a form that seems to threaten him. Interestingly, the dreamer acknowledges his regression only after awakening from the initial dream. “Dream reliving” involves imagining new responses to the dream and experiencing new outcomes. This simple practice can carry over into the dream’s continuation, or similar thematic dreams, to facilitate its completion. In this case, the dreamer immediately encounters someone who reminds him that defensiveness is the source of his failure. Acknowledging the end of the “ghetto” is perhaps an allusion to the end of his resistance. As a “ghetto” is a place where people have limited opportunities and constant exposure to violence and trauma, acknowledging the end of the “ghetto” is perhaps an allusion to the end of his resistance. This sets up the final encounter, where our dreamer receives the light without recoiling.

The dreams we have considered portray the dreamer’s awareness of an initial wound or state of conflict but then reveal the emergence of a surprising, undivided condition. The following dream continues this theme of transformation. It commences with a stark view of the dreamer’s “diseased” condition but gives way to a sense of rebirth.

[17] I am aware that I am terminally ill, and I am with a woman who also will soon die of an incurable disease. We are at a spiritual retreat and sleeping in open rooms. She and I have beds beside each other but do not sleep together. That night, we lie down in our respective beds and fall asleep. In the middle of the night, I am overwhelmed by a white light that comes in intense waves, subsiding briefly between each exquisite pulsation. For a while, there is only light. I am aware that the light is pouring through me into the sleeping woman beside me, and we are both healed of our illnesses. As I surrender completely, a voice says, “Your mortal life is over”. Later, we both awaken and realize that we have been healed. I know that she and I will remain together for all eternity.

The process narrative: The dreamer becomes aware that he shares an intractable condition with someone else, which becomes resolved despite a sense of futility. This stark dream mirrors the theme of previous dreams, in which a sense of inner division, impoverishment, or disease, precedes the onset of the light. In each instance, the dreamer comes to terms with and surrenders to his predicament. What is more, for the first time in this dream, the dreamer shares the predicament and the light with another, inviting a theme not only of healing but of connection.

The following dream occurred after the dreamer had moved back to his home in south Texas after living elsewhere for 25 years.

[18] I become aware that a group of hunters, of which my stepfather and father are members, have come upon a Native American man in the woods. Thinking of him as no more than an animal, they have killed him and beheaded him, keeping his head as a trophy. I am horrified and convinced that the crime must be reported. While most of the hunters express no remorse whatsoever, my father wears a pained, confused look about what they have done. As I talk to him about our need to take action, it is as if he slowly awakens from a deep sleep and finally acknowledges the truth. Then I call the authorities and tell them what has happened.

As I hang up, I become aware that a cougar is making its way into deep South Texas and moving into the area near the Mexican border where I grew up. I am hopeful that it will thrive there.

Then, suddenly, I am aware that I was dreaming. I walk through a meadow and look up to see a beautiful, dew-covered red hibiscus. I take a few more steps and affirm that when I looked up the next time, I will see the Holy Light. I lift my eyes and behold a huge orb of white light surrounded by a delicate, lattice-like corona that takes up most of the sky. I know that it is the light of Christ.

Then, an elderly woman approaches from behind me. Her eyes tell me that she loves me. I reach out, put my arm around her, and kiss her forehead, knowing that she is Mary, the mother of Jesus. We turn back toward the light and see that a second light has appeared to the left, slightly below the white orb. The new light is bluish-violet and—with delicate, hairlike filaments of light—resembles the blossom of a passionflower. I turn to Mary and say, “Is that your light?” She nods.

I turn back and look again to see that a third light has appeared to the right, slightly below the white orb. It shines from the window of a tower whose base now stands only a few feet away from us. “Whose light is that?” I ask. Mary replies, “It’s Mary Magdalene’s light”. Then I say, “Do you want to go there?” Again, she nods, so we walked forward and begin to climb the tower’s circular stairs.

The process narrative: The dreamer becomes aware of a wrongdoing that is denied by a perpetrator. After convincing the person of the error, he reports the wrongdoing more widely. Then, he becomes aware that something is moving toward its original place or condition. He becomes aware of different expressions of something and brings two of them together through his efforts.

As for the dreamer’s responses, he responds interpersonally and through social action. After helping his father become committed to a new perspective, he makes sure that his father’s remorse is reinforced by wider awareness and enforcement. One can see in this robust response a commitment on all levels to a “turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness,” in the words of the Lankavatara Sutra.

The dreamer’s vision provides a canvas upon which a complete spirituality is radiantly displayed, an “open heaven” that was described as the consummate fulfilment of the Philokalia tradition of the Orthodox Church. Through reciting the “Jesus Prayer,” Byzantine monks sought the equivalent of the Transfiguration experience, an experience that “leads to and from the person of Christ and finds in everything illumined by the uncreated light of his radiance the revelation of Christ in nature and in Scripture” (Louth 2004, pa. 94). As Symeon the New Theologian (Catechesis 16: 127–36) described it, “I lifted my eyes, sensibly, to contemplate heavenly realities, and then all appeared to me as it was at first”.

Of course, once a person has accepted one’s limitations and surrenders to the harness of life’s daily losses and contradictions, the level of inner conflict depicted in the previous dreams presumably lessens. If so, the experience of the light may arise without as much antecedent conflict. In support of this view, consider a final dream that we have presented without further analysis. Recall the dream in which a woman told the dreamer that he first needed to “love the form” to experience the light. The dreamer finally seems to know this in the following dream, which took place 30 years later.

[19] I am with an unknown man in an outdoor scene and suddenly become lucid. I tell my companion, “If you want to see the light, meditate on whatever you see”. Following my advice, I immediately see a children’s outdoor swing set. I lie down on the grass and meditate on the image of the swing set. The light comes after a moment’s hesitation, obliterating the imagery and leaving me to receive it in waves of ecstasy.

4. Discussion

In summary, the cumulative insights that we have derived from our single subject’s dreams indicate that when a dreamer is willing to embrace the specific form of the dream—however afflicted it may sometimes appear with its inherent duality, conflict, and limitation—the dreamer may experience the light. As our dreamer has a Judeo-Christian foundation, the parallel to the suffering servant passage in the book of Isaiah comes to mind as a metaphor for how the divine is revealed through the garb of poverty, sickness, and suffering.

“He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in no account” (NSRV, Isaiah 53:3).

In a Christian context, the suffering servant is widely interpreted to herald the coming of Jesus, who is to have said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John, 8:12). In this personal perspective of cultural belonging and faith, it is significant, perhaps, that the experience of light is not merely one of mental clarity, but also deep love and connection, exquisite feeling, and abiding presence. That is to say, the experience is profoundly embodied and soulful. While it announces the presence of something higher that is uniquely capable of resolving the inner division, it crosses graciously to the human side of the equation, as well, by intensifying one’s experience of love and relationship. Indeed, we have seen that viewing the light in personified form grounds the experience in human relationships, further supporting the light’s expression in one’s relationships and in right action.

In several of the dreams, we also see the importance of relationships in the dreamer’s spiritual life. When the guru declined the dreamer’s obeisance in [3], doing yoga with a woman brought the light into his awareness. When he ran from the devil in [12], a female friend ran with him. When he blessed the body of his deceased friend in [7], the body flew with him into the sky. When he hugged the angry woman in [8], the light erupted. When the light healed him from the terminal illness in [17], the light healed his female companion, as well. And when he climbed the stairs to Mary Magdalene’s tower in [18], Mary went with him, too. This relational emphasis communicates something that one can feel, if not verbalize, about the antecedent context for the light’s coming: that it is often where “two or more are gathered (Matthew 18:20)”.

Almost without exception, the principal challenge conveyed to the dreamer was to become aware of the complex division within himself—the apparently irreconcilable aspects of impulse, resistance, and character that seemed to prevent him from becoming the person he aspired to be. Ultimately, a sense of futility preceded the breakthroughs, and perhaps this was necessary. The experience of visionary light may have a developmental trajectory. In Mysticism, Underhill (2011) explores the lives of Western mystics from a historical, non-doctrinal perspective. She describes the experience of “illumination” as a mid-stage development that precedes “the dark night of the soul”—a period of spiritual and psychological turmoil that may persist for many years, eventually giving way to a state of integration that Underhill calls “the unitive way”. In the words of Yeats, “Nothing can be sole or whole that has not first been rent”. Indeed, the apparent prerequisite to the experience of light was in several instances becoming acutely aware of an internal division or problem and suffering this awareness. Through these dream orchestrations, the dreamer experienced movement along several themes, including identifying an embodiment of God that he could serve, experiencing protection from the perception of evil, finding a place for the natural or instinctual self, healing or facilitating it, and reconciling his differences with women. Except for his first dream, in which the light dawned without antecedent, the light appeared as the consummation of efforts made to address problems that had no ready solution at one level, but gave way to the experience of light in response to the dreamer’s acts of acceptance and surrender.

A similar observation was made by Rev. Jeremy Taylor, who suggested that dreamers often become spontaneously lucid in their dreams immediately after they have given up a harmful projection in waking life or taken responsibility for their part in an ongoing conflict (Taylor 2009, p. 182). Psychologist Harry Hunt writes that lucid dreaming, in its maximum development, “leads not to wakefulness or simple cognitive alertness in the dream but to subjectively powerful archetypal dreams and to forms of enhanced self-awareness reminiscent of Maslow ([1962] 2011) on peak experience and of meditational awareness in Eastern traditions” (1989, p. 119). Taken together, in this study, we find the metaphorical term “lucidity” in dreams to thus become correlated both with transcendent light and psychological transformation. The lucid dream emerges as a workshop of spiritual evolution, not a simulacrum of transcendent experience, but a lived moment full of choice, insight and metamorphosis. Just as American Transcendentalists viewed their own extraordinary experiences as fuel for social engagement and just communities for all (Buerens 2020), modern spiritual experience has emerged as a necessary part of existence, allowing for re-enchanted support and guidance in all aspects of everyday life (MacKian 2012), moving us towards enhanced connectivity and community.