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Dear Soul Arcanum:

I am a Hindu by religion. Recently sages or ascetics have been appearing in my dreams and preaching some mantras. The problem is that I forget them totally after I awake. What does this indicate?
Dr. Rao

Dear Dr. Rao:

For those who are unfamiliar, in the Hindu tradition it’s considered wise and powerful for spiritual seekers to have a guru (spiritual teacher) to guide them through the twists and turns of the journey to enlightenment. These gurus are usually physically incarnate, but they can also be beings from beyond this dimension.

Whether they are incarnate or not, they may visit their students in dreams and even manifest to them across great distances when they are awake. It’s unclear if they leave their bodies via astral projection to achieve this feat or if they somehow bi-locate. (Great spiritual masters are said to be capable of all sorts of amazing feats, and are known to be highly cryptic when questioned.)

It’s also believed that gurus, sages and ascended masters will sometimes visit a student in his dreams to initiate him into a higher level of spiritual power and experience. This may be achieved by giving the student a special mantra to chant during meditation or by delivering some profound spiritual knowledge/wisdom. This initiation sparks the release of kundalini and thus a new level of spiritual awakening for the student.

A mantra is a word, phrase, or collection of sounds designed to lift one into a higher vibration or achieve a certain aim. Many people are familiar with the mantras Om, and Om mani padme hum. There are many mantras common to certain spiritual paths, such as those of kundalini yoga.

It is said that a mantra that is given to a student by a guru is far more powerful than a common one, for it is personal to the student and is charged with the guru’s divine essence and wisdom. In fact, some say that when the guru gives the mantra to the student by speaking it out loud, the student may be spontaneously awakened at that very moment by its power.

Our dreams reveal much about who we are deep down and where we are spiritually at the time. When we have recurring nightmares, for example, we know that there are some big fears at work deep in our psyches. When we have generally pleasant dreams, it’s a sign that we’re on top of things in our waking lives. Remembering dreams like the ones you describe is unusual, for these are the dreams of a highly developed spiritual seeker.

We all work out problems and receive guidance in our dreams. Most of the time when we dream of spirit guides, we don’t realize that is what’s happening. In our dreams, spirit guides may take the form of another person who tells us where to go or what to do. We may dream of sitting in a classroom, listening intently to a teacher lecture, but not be able to remember anything that was said. (This is entirely different from dreaming that we’re in school again and can’t get our locker open or haven’t done our homework.) Spirit guides may also appear in dreams as doctors, therapists, coaches or healers of some kind. They can even get messages through to us by simply speaking as a disembodied voice or creating a scene we watch in the dream like we might watch a television show.

I believe that the spirit guide many of us experience as a nameless, faceless presence in our minds is often that part of us that remains in the Spirit world – what some may call our own higher self. I also know that we can communicate with our own selves in other times and dimensions; thus our future selves can deliver a message to our current selves and come across as a different individual.

I mention this because I believe the key to consciously accessing spiritual guidance is to trust in our own higher selves/inner wisdom, for this is the bridge between our conscious mind and all that lies beyond this world. I don’t think it really matters whether the guidance we need comes to us from our higher selves, a spirit guide or a guru, or even if these are fundamentally different in nature: the important thing is to be able to work with our experiences in a constructive way.

To draw information from dreams into our waking awareness, we need to create a bridge between the subconscious and the conscious mind. I assume you’re already writing your dreams down as soon as you awake. If not, this is the first thing to try. If you make a habit of this, it will get easier to remember your dreams, and you will also attract more spiritual guidance through them. It’s like telling the Universe: I’m paying attention now, so send more my way!

You can also program yourself before you go to sleep to dream of whatever you want or need at that time. When you close your eyes, affirm that you will not only receive what you’re wanting in your dreams, you will also clearly remember it all when you awake. You may also find it powerful to develop the ability to lucid dream and astral project. This will enable you to visit with spirit guides and gurus and forge a strong bridge between your conscious and subconscious, which will make a far broader range of spiritual insights and experiences available to you.

To consciously access your guide while you’re awake, you need to raise your vibration and then alter your state of consciousness. You can do this most readily via hypnosis or guided meditation. The goal is to make what is subconscious conscious – to bridge the gap between the two. Basically, you will reenter the dream state while maintaining at least a thread of conscious awareness.

As this is tricky, it can be very helpful to have a skilled hypnotherapist guide you. The therapist can then ask you questions and record your answers should you not be able to remember what you experienced when you are brought back to full conscious awareness. If I were working with you as a hypnotherapist, I would guide you into a very deep trance, into a dream within a dream within a dream. Once you were there, I’d have you recall the dream in which you received the mantra, and simply ask you, If you could remember the mantra, what would it be? If that failed, I’d dialogue directly with the spirit guide through you.

Your own higher self can guide you to what you’re seeking, but to do this, you must get into a high vibration and then let your conscious mind step aside and your intuition take over. If I were you, I’d get into a high vibration via yoga and meditation and then just begin to tone. Start by vocalizing an Ahhhhh sound, and then let your voice just open up. (It’s best to do this when you’re home alone, so you don’t feel inhibited.) Allow your voice to shift as it will, and any pitches, words or sounds to just flow out. As you relax and open up, you’ll find that something begins to shift your voice without you being consciously aware that it is going to happen, and soon you’ll be repeating tones, melodies, words and phrases, which may lead you to the perfect mantra for you.

Finally, it’s wise to trust in our experiences – even the blocks that frustrate us. There is a reason why we remember some things and not others. So if you can’t remember this mantra for now, it may be that you’re doing work in your dreams that you’re not meant to be doing yet in waking life. At the same time, you can trust that your keen desire to remember is leading you somewhere, so keep pursuing this – just do so with trust that you will have what you desire when the time is right for you.

– Soul Arcanum

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