Last week, I bought Pete a new book called ‘The Secret History of Dreaming‘ by Robert Moss. He had recently had a dream that prompted him to paint a graphic depiction of the annual seal hunt and explained that he had been unable to get the image out of his head. When we heard an interview with the author of the book, we decided that it was a must-read. What to make of this oddly disturbing dream and painting?

The book explores the lost art of dreaming in human history and maintains that dreaming is “essential to our survival and evolution, to creative endeavors in every field, and, quite simply, to getting us through our daily lives.” Moss says that people through the ages (not just creative types) have used dreams to guide them and unearth solutions to their problems. He looks at the relationship between the dreaming and waking lives of people such as Thomas Jefferson, Harriet Tubman, John Lennon and Mark Twain. One of the most fascinating chapters is on Sigmund Freud and his inability to decipher a famous dream of his own called the ‘Irma Dream’ – the one that led him to invent psychoanalysis. You can read this chapter (and I highly recommend that you do) here. The book also acts as a guide to understanding your own dreams and it encourages us to pay attention to the dream language of our own inner worlds.

Earlier this year, I had been feeling that I hadn’t been able to tap into the space of deep creativity and contemplation that I used to find easy to access. I read excerpts of David Lynch’s book ‘Catching the Big Fish‘ (hat tip to Saul Colt) and tried to let go into some of the deeper spaces of my subconscious. I would meditate briefly or contemplate a decision that I had to make before I went to sleep and sometimes I woke up with a good idea but most of the time I got up and made coffee and started reading email. My commitment to this practice was spotty at best, so I took to reading about meditation. Then I learned that one of the worst things you can do when you’re being lazy about actually meditating is to read about meditation and believe that it is just as useful. It’s not. And it doesn’t help when you have several volumes of fascinating material to choose from.

But I digress.

Many artists and storytellers use meditation in different forms to explore inner worlds. David Lynch uses Transcendental Meditation. Werner Herzog has his ‘walking oracles’ … and so maybe it is fitting that I had an experience this week that hints at these mysteries with a dream visit from Werner himself.

Werner Herzog

I dreamt that I was standing beneath a steep and looming snow-covered mountain beside a Tibetan man. Werner was giving us instructions. Snow and wind was whipping around his face and his hair was blowing wildly. Because of this, he had to yell. He shouted, “You must take ze boat to the top of the mountain. It is in ze box and you must take it to the door of paradise.” Behind him, people were unloading a giant box that supposedly contained a boat. My dream state was quite lucid at this point so I was aware that the reference to the boat and the mountain was probably from his famous film, “Fitzcarraldo”. But his emphasis was on the mountaintop and the journey to paradise and implied some danger. Nevertheless, it was an order.

Immediately, I awoke – moving from dream to waking state in an instant. It was early dawn. Pete stirred beside me and got up. I collected my dream thoughts and told him what I had just seen. I added, “I think that the mountain was Mount Kailash.” He said, “That’s weird.” The night before he had been checking the selection at our local video store online to see if they had Herzog’s film ‘Wheel of Time’. In the film, he documents the Kalachakra initiation – to be conducted by the Dalai Lama – that was supposed to take place in Bodhgaya, India, in 2002. It did not take place due to the Dalai Lama’s ill health. Also in the film – which we didn’t know until we read the liner notes – was Herzog’s journey to Mount Kailash in Western Tibet where he insisted on filming on the sacred mountain himself, without a cinematographer.

In an interview, he speaks of Mount Kailash’s place in the film:

At Mount Kailash I added to the film even though it doesn’t fully belong in there and yet it’s somehow the pivotal element in the film. This we have to believe is not just a sacred, symbolic cosmography like the mandala but it has to do with a landscape that is felt to be sacred for the Buddhists and the Hindus and others as well. It was a deep curiosity to show a truly sacred landscape. This was one of the reasons why I wanted to shoot Mount Kailash by myself. I was my own cinematographer for these sequences.

No climbers have attempted an ascent of the stunning peak due to its sacred status (and perhaps the legend that anyone who touches its slopes will inevitably die a horrible death).

Mount Kailash

Does this mean that I will take my dream to indicate that I should somehow try it anyway? Of course not. But it did convince Peter and I to go out and immediately rent and watch the film. We were both deeply moved by it – perhaps even more so than if I had not had the dream. I think that ultimately it was a reminder for me to pay attention to my night-life, so to speak, and to keep a closer watch of the deep waters that are in all of us.

Here is the Dalai Lama from the film, answering Herzog’s question about whether or not Mount Kailash is the centre of the universe: