Svapna Yoga — The Yoga of Dreams
Tantric dream yoga teaches that the dream state is as rich with spiritual potential as the waking state — and that achieving lucidity in dreams (knowing one is dreaming) transforms the entire dream into a field of liberation practice.
Svapna Yoga (dream yoga) is a sophisticated Tantric and Vajrayana practice system that works with the dream state as a meditation field. The Milam practice of the Six Yogas of Naropa is its most systematic form. The goal is lucid dreaming — maintaining awareness that one is dreaming while within the dream — and then using that lucidity to practice meditation, dissolution of the dream into emptiness, deity visualization, and recognition of the dream's illusory nature. The philosophical basis is that dreams and waking experience are equally 'real' (or equally illusory) — both are projections of mind, neither has inherent existence. Recognizing dreams as dreams is therefore a direct training for recognizing waking experience as mind-projection.
The dream shows you the nature of waking life. Become lucid in the dream — then become lucid in all of life.
Stephen LaBerge's laboratory confirmation of lucid dreaming at Stanford (1980) — using pre-agreed eye signals during polysomnography-confirmed REM sleep — established that consciousness can maintain self-awareness during dreaming, validating the foundation of the Tantric and Vajrayana dream yoga traditions.
Bardo Thodol