Mapping Dreams: Method, Not Goal Creating a map is, naturally, a method, not the end goal. By making a map, you familiarize yourself with your surroundings and orient yourself in space. Think of a computer game where the playable area is hidden under a “fog of war.” The comparison to the dream world is a bit of a stretch, but it’s close enough. Have any of you played a game where the entire mission is just to reveal the map? Probably not. But there are plenty of games where clearing the fog and revealing the map helps you complete quests. Hardcore gamers know that in complex games, a map is essential. Having spatial awareness saves you time and energy, while a lack of a map turns an interesting game into a tedious loop of wandering. Mapping the dream world is a method, not a goal. And a dream map isn’t the dream world, just like a globe isn’t the Earth. A dream map is an artificially created space that more or less reflects our understanding of a particular set of dreams. The map can’t describe all your dreams. It’s limited by fundamental choices of elements — one person may map the dream landscape, another may focus on sensations, and someone else might highlight different components of the dream. The Dream Hackers chose to map the landscape. Why? They decided it would be a way of “not-doing” the dream’s description. This choice helps the dreamer silence some of the internal chatter connected to dream “sprites.” By “sprites,” the hackers mean the characters that appear in our dreams. According to the Dream Hackers, a dream is a bubble of perception, containing a small space that can include sprites and environmental backgrounds. Some dreams have no sprites or background at all.
Let’s digress a bit and talk about dream classifications. There are thousands of them. For instance, Patricia Garfield offers a classification of universal dreams that emphasizes the emotional side, dividing dreams into pairs of opposites: dreams of falling versus flying, losing versus finding, and so on. It’s one of the most elegant classifications, but it has around 36 dream types. The Dream Hackers came up with their own, boiling it down to four types:
Looped Nonsense (Typically highly simplified dreams with repetitive, monotonous plots; these usually come to people during illness, exhaustion, or mental fatigue; they’re well-remembered; in many cases, “loops” cycle through all 5-6 REM periods in a night. For beginners, they’re practically useless, but for experienced users, they’re a great opportunity to enter lucid dreams. Interestingly, “loops” often have minimal background and almost no sprites. The Dream Hackers consider these the dream equivalent of a debugging program).
Chatter (Dreams where 80-90% of the content is made up of conversation, monologues, and dialogues; usually hard to remember; typically occurs during the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th REM periods; with active practice, dreamers can transform these into the 3rd and 4th types).
Vivid Dreams (Dreams with a rich background, a complex plot, and striking sprites; often occur in the 1st, 5th, and 6th REM periods; these provide the main material for mapping).
Transparent Dreams (Rare in the early stages of practice; well-remembered; often mistaken for lucid dreams; these involve moments of realizing you’re asleep and aware of it).
The Dream Hackers don’t consider lucid dreams to be dreams at all. To reiterate, this is just one of many classifications. It’s no better or worse than others, and I’m only sharing it to show the limitations of dream mapping (which, as you’ve probably realized, mostly draws on the 3rd and 4th types). Why this “beta version” (i.e., pared-down model)? Why not create something bigger — like a dream map resembling the periodic table, where the “valency” of feelings, columns of visualized images, and concentration on certain body energy centers define the paradigm and sensory orientation? (Yeah, I said it!) All these challenges are within your reach. You’ve spent a third of your life in dreams and are experts in this area. Create your own models and classifications. There’s a Chinese saying: “First, you work the field, and then the field sustains you.” Put effort into building your model, and it will serve you in return. The Dream Hackers are lazy, so they whipped up a “beta version.” Their approach isn’t a gateway to the dream world, just a simple tunnel dug under the wall of the unknown.
I’ve met a lot of good people who’ve tried with varying degrees of dedication to practice “finding hands in dreams.” And honestly, few of them succeeded. Two or three successful dreams a year is typical. Sure, there are the lucky ones who get it naturally (or with effort but still succeed). But thousands dropped out of Toltec practices, thinking they were incapable, weak, or just didn’t “get it.” They later found “explanations” for their failures, but a longing for those amazing possibilities Castaneda described lingered in their hearts. The Dream Hackers offer them a new opportunity — a way into lucid dreaming through an artificially created substitute. If the Eagle is satisfied with a substitute created from life’s review, why wouldn’t it accept a surrogate from revisited dreams?
So, are we digging in? Let’s start our quest and clear some “fog of war.” Let’s take a look around.
What does a dreamer need to start mapping? First, a dream journal. Keep it close to your bed, along with a pencil and eraser. When you remember a dream, jot it down immediately. Draw a rough sketch of the setting — a mountain ridge, a lake, a clearing with a road. Did you see yourself in a house? Don’t sweat the details of the rooms — just mark the house and what’s around it. Did you see a dip that turned into a mountain before your eyes? Label it “Dip/Mountain.” Specifics aren’t essential here, but the more effort you put in initially, the faster your progress will be. Add labels to the sketch to explain details of the landscape. In a month, you’ll look at the drawing as if you’re seeing it for the first time. And the labels will bring the memories back. Next to the sketch, briefly describe the dream’s plot. For example, “Encounter with Ollie. It looked at me, and I almost wet myself. Fear shifted my attention to another bubble of perception (i.e., a new dream plot).” Number each dream entry. For individual dream descriptions, orientation by cardinal directions isn’t necessary. After a while, interesting transformations will start happening in your dream collection. Some dream bubbles will begin to merge. Like, you dream of a college, then your childhood home, and then a third dream connects all three in a chain of unified space. The last dream of the night is usually the easiest to remember, so practice “waking up softly.” Set an intention to “remember your dreams” each time you wake up. Latch onto a faint memory of some scene and pull the entire dream back into awareness. With a bit of practice, you’ll develop your own recall method. The key is to write every day. Didn’t catch a dream this night? Write about another dream you remember. Every day! (Or at least try).
Let’s detour a bit and talk about orientation. Say you’ve gathered a hundred dream descriptions and still don’t know how to place them on the map. Maybe a couple of dreams have merged into one cluster, but the rest are just floating around. OK! You’ve got two options — either continue piecing together the map yourself from a thousand bubbles or use the Dream Hackers’ experience to save yourself three or four years. For those who prefer a “pure experiment,” I’d recommend the first option. For everyone else, I’ll offer landmarks around which you can group your dream descriptions.
At the start, we hired some psychologists to solve the orientation problem. They ran loads of training sessions with our guys and volunteers who knew nothing about the project. For example, they’d gather a group of ten Muscovites and ask them to describe a monument. “How do you see it? From which side? Where are you approaching it from? Now here’s another monument. How do you see it? From what direction?” And so on. Waste of money. The experts’ final conclusion was that every person learns to orient themselves by cardinal directions at a certain period in their life. For this, they choose two points — their position and some object they assign a “north” or “south,” “east,” or “west” in relation to themselves. From then on, they orient based on that object, so some direction becomes primary. Apparently, the group experiments somehow confirmed this hypothesis. But it did nothing for us.
The Dream Hackers split into two gangs. One practiced the gradual merging of dreams. The other placed dream numbers on the map based on intuition (slackers are gonna slack). The first method led to many interesting discoveries. The second, though it created some confusion, ultimately wasn’t any worse than the first.
So, what were these discoveries?
First, the dream world (or rather, the model describing it) turned out to be fairly small. For example, there’s only one city. I’ve lived in many countries and been all over Russia except for the Far North and Far East. But on the dream map, there’s just one City — a blend of every city I’ve seen, with elements from St. Petersburg, Minsk, Kuzbass, Tashkent. The transitions and merges between these places are surprisingly smooth and natural. And around the City are thousands of dead-end bubbles (dreams) — vacation homes, friends’ houses, paths to places I’ve heard of but never visited.
The center of the dream world is the dreamer’s home. The world’s edges are the “boundary limits” (personally, I dislike the term, but what else can you expect from hackers? At least it’s not something like “Map Doom”). Boundary limits are the edges of the dream world (usually mountain ranges, seas, rivers, dunes, or deserts). You can’t cross (fly over, swim past) these edges. So far, it’s been noted that the southern and western limits are immovable. The northern limit gradually shifts back with practice. There are a few “blank spots” on the eastern edge (a seriously restricted zone!).
The dream world map has plenty of places that don’t exist in the waking world. For instance, the Lower Worlds, the Cataclysm Zone, labyrinths, and so on. I’ve already mentioned the labyrinths.
(The most important thing, and I almost forgot!) We nearly lost our minds when we realized that our maps matched in the main details. Certain unique locations appear on every dreamer’s map. For example, K. writes about a giant structure connected to a stadium. I have a similar formation. And since I know where it is on my map, I can tell K. its location, helping her build her layout. And if I point out other nearby markers, she might have an “aha” moment and remember that she’s been there hundreds of times. She’ll feel something indescribable — the feeling of dream memory. Another discovery came with two places — a sanctuary and a prison (some people had versions like “police computer” — sentient, malicious, destructive; a concentration camp with tormented captives; army training camp, etc.). You’ll find plenty in the first place. In the second place, you’ve been many times and lost a lot. The Dream Hackers noticed that when you practice diligently (searching persistently for the right places and carefully “slipping away” from unwanted ones), the dreamer starts an incredible process. Each new memory and description of a dream suddenly draws you into a stream of other memories (from ten or twenty years ago). Hundreds of places you’ve visited hundreds of times — all in one vivid flash. In these moments, you experience a powerful state. It’s not euphoria but more of an intense thirst — faster! More! Reality, the people close to you, work, the whole surrounding world somehow let you be. You’re here and not here. On some boundary. Dreams become transparent. You’re aware of yourself in dreams almost every night. The achievements are intoxicating. Castaneda and don Juan’s words take on new meaning. You see things in them you never understood before. And then suddenly, bang! A crash, complete “shutdown,” and in unbearable depression, you want to jump off the roof. And once again, you have to gather your strength bit by bit, continuing the practice. Toward new peaks and new falls… breaking through inner barriers each time… And eventually, you pick up your dream map, crumple it, and use it as intended. You don’t need it anymore. But by that time, there’s usually no “fog of war” left on it. Then, you turn your gaze to a few strange “blank spots” and the limits of the tonal. But, as Lolita from “Morning Post” says, that’s a whole other story.