The Starting Point

I’m going to repeat what you must do in your dreams in order to pass the first gate of dreaming. First you must focus your gaze on something of your choice as the starting point. Then shift your gaze to other items and look at them in brief glances. Focus your gaze on as many things as you can. Remember that if you glance only briefly, then the images don’t shift. Then go back to the original item, the first one that you looked at.

To pass the first gate of dreaming means that, first of all, we have reached the first gate of dreaming by becoming aware that we are falling asleep, or by having a gigantically real dream, and second, that we have crossed it by being able to sustain the sight of any item of our dreams.

The dream items dissipate very quickly. In order to offset the evanescent quality of dreams, sorcerers have devised the use of the starting point item. Every time you isolate it and look at it, you get a surge of energy, so in the beginning don’t look at too many things. Four items will suffice every time.

Later on you may enlarge the scope until you can cover all you want, but as soon as the images begin to shift and you feel you are losing control, go back to your starting point item and start all over again.

The most astounding thing that happens to dreamers is that, on reaching the first gate, they also reach the energy body. The energy body is the counterpart of the physical body. A ghostlike configuration made of pure energy. The physical body also is made out of energy.

The difference is that the energy body has only appearance but no mass. Since it’s pure energy, it can perform acts that are beyond the possibilities of the physical body; such as transporting itself in one instant to the ends of the universe. Dreaming is the art of tempering the energy body, of making it supple and coherent by gradually exercising it.

Through dreaming we condense the energy body until it’s a unit capable of perceiving. Its perception, although affected by our normal way of perceiving the daily world, is an independent perception. It has its own sphere.

That sphere is energy. The energy body deals with energy in terms of energy. There are three ways in which it deals with energy in dreaming: it can perceive energy as it flows, or it can use energy to boost itself like a rocket into unexpected areas, or it can perceive as we ordinarily perceive the world.

To perceive energy as it flows means to see. It means that the energy body sees energy directly as a light or as a vibrating current of sorts or as a disturbance.

Or it feels it directly as a jolt or as a sensation that can even be pain. Since energy is its sphere, it is no problem for the energy body to use currents of energy that exist in the universe to propel itself. All it has to do is isolate them, and off it goes with them.

I have already said that sorcerers isolate in their dreams scouts from other realms. Their energy bodies do that. They recognize energy and go for it. But it isn’t desirable for dreamers to indulge in searching for scouts. I was reluctant to tell you about it, because of the facility with which one can get swayed into that search.

Reaching, with deliberate control, the first gate of dreaming is a way of arriving at the energy body. But to maintain that gain is predicated on energy alone. Sorcerers get that energy by redeploying, in a more intelligent manner, the energy they have and use for perceiving the daily world.