If you associate Carl Jung with staid, stodgy sessions in closed, quiet offices or with the institutional conformity endemic to academic white men, think again. All you need do is look at Jung’s art and read about his explorations into the swirling psychedelic spaces of liminal mind and you’ll soon see him as an inspired mystic who used creativity and explorations into some of the stranger parts of the psyche to find healing and mental balance.

In 1912, Carl Jung dramatically split from his mentor, Sigmund Freud, an acrimonious breakup that sent Jung into a psychological tailspin. Jung felt he had been, in his words, menaced by psychosis. The process of digging himself out of that hole produced what Jung considered the prima materia (an alchemical term that refers to the starting point of transformation) for his lifelong work. Jung felt his most important work was first conceived during this period.

Jung considered creativity and imagination necessary to achieve psychological balance, as well as to accomplish meaningful work. To embark on the path to healing, Jung taught himself to linger in the zone between consciousness and unconsciousness where he could let unconscious symbols and images arise while consciously monitoring the experience. Jung felt he could bridge the gap between his deeper intuitive psyche and his logical waking mind by using the creative process to actively engage what arose in his unconscious, then integrating it into his conscious life. He called this process active imagination.

Although Jung didn’t clarify how he began active imagination, some writers and historians think he accessed the realm between consciousness and the unconscious by entering hypnagogia, the dream space between waking and sleep. We know from Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, that he did experiment with this extraordinary mind state.

We all naturally experience hypnagogia. As you fall asleep at night or into a daytime nap, or struggle to stay awake when you’re exhausted, you pass through a swirling hallucinogenic, psychedelic realm that feels partly like a dream and partly like awareness. That’s hypnagogia, the kaleidoscopic, free-associative dream state that artists, scientists, and thinkers of all sorts harness for various purposes, including creativity. In the morning, you surface from sleep through the swimmy realm of hypnopompia, the twin of hypnagogia that emerges on the other end of sleep. Together, these two states are called liminal dreams.

The word “liminal” comes from the Latin word limen, which means threshold or doorway. Liminal dream states lie between waking and sleep. In hypnagogia and hypnopompia, you straddle conscious and unconscious zones, experiencing both at the same time. This allows you to simultaneously access your logical, observational mind and your intuitive, dreaming mind, so you can drop into your unconscious but retain enough conscious awareness to bring the experience back into waking life.

It’s easier to get into hypnagogia, since you can access it any time using naps. Just settle into a relaxed position when your energy naturally dips, perhaps late afternoon or in the evening. You can also do it in bed at night, but then you fall asleep so it’s hard to remember what happened. Once you’re comfortable, breathe slowly and deeply, allowing your body to relax into slumber while giving your mind enough mental juice to stay awake. The trick is to sink into the hypnagogic dream while retaining enough awareness to not fall asleep. For more detailed exercises to help you find hypnagogia and hypnopompia, visit www.liminaldreaming.com.

Over the years, analysts and other practitioners in Jungian traditions have used hypnagogia (or hypnopompia) as the starting point for active imagination. In liminal dream states, the mind drifts with a minimum of direction from the conscious mind. We’re unconscious enough that our reasoning, controlling ego lets go of its grip and we encounter deep elements of the mind, yet we remain awake enough to perceive and remember what arises. This allows symbols, images, ideas, and other elements of the language of the unconscious to surface into conscious understanding.

In the process developed by Jung then fine-tuned over decades, active imagination practitioners begin by drifting into liminal zones and immersing themselves in a swirling stream of images, memories, story fragments, or symbols from the unconscious. They then allow whatever arises to manifest via creativity. This creates a dialogue with the unconscious, allowing practitioners to develop a relationship with what lies in the deeper parts of their psyches. Jung believed that learning to understand and communicate with the unconscious naturally resolves many psychological issues.

This Active Imagination exercise is based on a version developed by Robert A. Johnson. A Jungian analyst and prolific author, Johnson wrote several 1970s best sellers about psychology. In the 1940s he studied with Krishnamurti in Ojai, California, and in the 1950s he established a Jungian analytical practice, which he closed in the early 1960s to join a Benedictine monastery. He resumed his practice later in the 1960s and lived for decades as an analyst, author, and priest.

Active Imagination Exercise

1. Set the stage for a creative process. Keep something handy nearby: paper for drawing, a pad to jot down ideas, clay for sculpting, paints, collage materials, a video camera to capture movement, etc. Keep in mind that the creative process is the point of this exercise, not the end product.
2. Get yourself into a hypnagogic state. You can also do this with hypnopompia, but hypnagogia is an easier starting point.
3. Sink into the flow of the liminal dream state with the intention of encountering meaningful symbols, images, ideas, or impulses. Do not attempt to control or manipulate the experience, but don’t allow yourself to simply drift into fantasizing. Watch what arises with the idea that your unconscious can communicate with you, and can teach you about the contents of your own mind.
4. Once something intriguing appears, or as soon as you begin to transition out of your liminal dream state to waking or sleep, begin the process of giving form or expression to whatever stood out for you. Start a drawing, mold clay, record yourself singing or dancing—whatever helps concretize the gifts of the unconscious into waking life.
5. Allow the creative process to become a meditation. As you write or paint or dance, think about what you perceived and why it felt important to you. Ask yourself what message your unconscious had for you. Let it become part of your waking consciousness.
6. As you continue to engage with your creative process, you may want to reenter the liminal dream state to refresh the symbols, images, characters, or whatever it was that caught your attention. Do not hurry. Allow the process to take however long it takes, whether that’s hours, days, or months.

During the emotionally chaotic time in his life when he developed active imagination, Jung began recording his experiences in a series of journals that he called his “black books.” At the outbreak of the first world war, Jung came to see his visionary journeys as culturally relevant, not just personally important. He began transcribing his visions, along with commentary, onto parchment. He then commissioned the creation of a red leather book into which he interleaved the parchment pages. He continued to fill the book with his astounding visionary art and graceful calligraphy. This illustration of Jung’s adventures in active imagination came to be known as The Red Book. In 2009, a facsimile of the volume was released by Jung’s estate.

Last month, I had the opportunity to see a show called “The Illuminated Imagination: The Art of C.G. Jung” at the Art, Design, and Architecture Museum at UCSB. The exhibition included the original Red Book, one of the black books, and a series of Jung’s other art, some of the most remarkable, and most psychedelic, pieces I’ve ever seen.

For some audiences, I write or teach about hypnagogic or hypnopompic “dream tripping”—using dreams to achieve the kinds of states that people seek with psychoactive substances. Hypnagogia can feel like a psychedelic experience. Some highs are endogenous—naturally occurring within the body. Over the last year or two, popular culture has increasingly embraced the concept that psychedelics can be useful for healing and also to access the visionary, a state that finds expression in creativity, a perspective shift that owes much to Michael Pollan’s work. Yet many people hesitate to engage in the powerful, and also illegal, experience offered by psychedelics. But you can achieve these states using hypnagogia. As I walked through the exhibit, I thought, “Wow, Jung was clearly a hypnagogia tripper!”

We can all have wild, astounding, visionary experiences using solely the natural powers of the mind. When you look at Jung’s art, I think you’ll clearly see that he has visited such realms. Jung believed that tuning into frequencies of the unconscious then approaching them with creativity naturally balanced the psyche. He also felt that anyone could undertake this process. It is an adventure in self that’s waiting for you to embark on it.

Jennifer Dumpert is an SF-based writer, lecturer, and founder of the worldwide dream exploration group the Oneironauticum. She is the author of Liminal Dreaming: Exploring Consciousness at the Edges of Sleep. She posts a daily dream to Twitter as @oneirofer. UrbanLandscape.com

BY JENNIFER DUMPERT

The practice of dream incubation entails engaging the dreaming mind to help address personal or intellectual questions, to encourage healing, or to enliven intuition and boost creativity. The origins of modern medicine include dream incubation. In ancient Greece, pilgrims seeking cures for various ailments flocked to temples dedicated to the god Asclepius. Called Asclepeia, these temples served as both shrines and hospitals. Snakes, sacred to Asclepius, were used in healing rituals and also crawled freely across floors where the sick and injured slept. Thus the symbol of healthcare and medicine—a snake wrapped around a staff, called the Rod of Asclepius.

Priests of Asclepius also served as doctors. The original Hippocratic oath—the central tenet of Western medicine—began with an invocation to Asclepius. Hippocrates may have begun his career at an Asclepion. Priests employed many methods to treat physical and spiritual ailments, including herbs, nutrition, and even simple surgeries. They also interpreted dreams that resulted from dream incubation.

Pilgrims seeking healing arrived at a temple and went through a purification process. They then used relaxation and visualization techniques to focus on their problem. Finally, these supplicants went to sleep seeking wisdom that would be delivered in the dream. In the light of day the physician priests performed physical examinations of patients and also reviewed their dreams, seeking insight into possible treatments. Remedies often involved natural medications, physical exercise, and semidevotional acts.

Modern forms of dream incubation are used by dreamers from all walks of life to seek healing, solve intellectual and personal problems, and generally get in touch with the wisdom of the dreaming mind. The form of dream incubation I teach integrates REM, hypnagogia, and hypnopompia. We pass through five phases of sleep every night, identified by varying EEG signatures. Dreams occur in four of them.

The first, hypnagogia, occurs right at the edge of sleep. As you drift off, you pass through this kaleidoscopic, free-associative dream state. Your mind can stay conscious as you begin to dream. With a bit of practice you can train yourself to linger here and to vary the degree of waking consciousness you bring into hypnagogic dreams. Artists, inventors, philosophers, and thinkers have long harnessed the power of hypnagogia to gain insight, boost creativity, and promote healing. REM (rapid eye movement) dreams happen throughout the night. However, once you’ve been asleep for four hours, periods of REM start to get longer. The more you sleep the more REM you experience.

Hypnopompia, the twin of hypnagogia, happens as you wake. Floating through this deeply relaxed state of being, your mind meanders back and forth across the border of waking thought and drifting dream. Here you can gently access parts of your experience that your waking mind has a harder time encountering.

To practice dream incubation, familiarize yourself with your most common sleep positions. To determine that, pay attention to how you’re positioned most frequently when you wake up or fall asleep. As anyone knows who plays sports or a musical instrument, or has an embodied practice like yoga or tai chi, the body has memory. Once you find a flow, mind follows movement. Trying to remember dreams can work the same way. Whenever you try to recall a previous night’s dream, get into one of your regular sleep postures and relax into it. Memory may come.

Choose a time when you can linger in bed in the morning. Turn off the alarm clock and turn on Do Not Disturb on your phone. Shut the kids and cats out of your room. Now you’re ready to try dream incubation!

Go to bed. Lie in one of your normal sleep positions and form a question, or just get a clear mental image of the issue you want to address—anything from a broken foot to a broken heart to broken code.

Try to maintain awareness of your question through hypnagogia. Breathe slowly and deeply. Relax, but try to keep your question in your head right up until the moment you fall asleep. Like Salvador Dali, Thomas Edison, August Kekulé (who discovered the benzene ring), or Marcel Proust, you may find that hypnagogic dreams provide powerful insight.

Next, literally sleep on it. That phrase exists for a reason. Let your unconscious mind meditate on whatever you’re cogitating. Your dreaming psyche approaches problems at a very deep level.

In the morning, wake as slowly as you can. Linger in the gentle, open, sweet space of hypnopompia. One part of your experience will involve thought. As you surface into consciousness, you’ll start to have ideas and memories. But the other part of your mind will loiter in dream. Slowly shift into your different sleep positions and drift off again. Your body memory will find the associations with the intention you set in hypnagogia as well as dream revelations from REM.

Keep something by your bed to capture whatever comes into your head. I keep a voice-activated recorder by my pillow. You can purchase devices or smartphone apps that start recording once you start talking. You can also keep a notebook to write down thoughts or a sketchpad to draw images.

As with all practices, the more you do it, the better you’ll get at it. The effectiveness of dream incubation rests on the belief that your psyche knows what serves you best. Try this ancient practice. Dream and heal thyself!

Jennifer Dumpert writes and lectures about liminal dreaming and is founder of the Oneironauticum. She tweets a dream a day @OneiroFer. UrbanDreamscape.com

We’ve all been visited by the spirit of creativity. A flash of inspiration causes you to compose a new song, paint trailing vines on the kitchen furniture, or write an article that eloquently expresses some of the ideas that float through your imagination. It’s a marvelous feeling when the muses of creativity grant you their gifts. But sometimes you have to work to seek inspiration and try to harness your creative power. Difficult though that often proves, you can use liminal dreaming to woo your muse.

Liminal dreaming occurs at the boundary between sleep and waking. When we talk about dreams, we usually refer to the REM (rapid eye movement) dreams that mostly happen during the second part of the night. There are actually several different types of dreams that correspond to stages of sleep. The two stages of brainwave activity that make up liminal dreaming are called hypnagogia and hypnopompia. These are the phases of consciousness you pass through when you’re falling asleep or waking up, and they are very unusual states of mind. Artists and thinkers have long cultivated these states of mind—especially hypnagogia, which is easier to access—to jump start the creative process.

Chemist August Kekulé famously figured out the structure of the benzene ring—a problem he’d been pondering for some time—in a hypnagogic state. Nikola Tesla and Sir Isaac Newton used liminal dreaming to arrive at ideas, as did Emanuel Swedenborg and Rudolf Steiner. Readers remember the madeleine from Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, but they forget that the first scene of the book is actually a hypnagogic reverie. To learn to take advantage of liminal dreaming to help you with creativity, all you need is a basic understanding of how it works, and then you can follow a simple practice developed by Thomas Edison and Salvador Dali.

Brainwave states, both waking and sleeping, are measured by EEG, which tests electricity in the brain and produces those sine wave–looking readouts that you can probably easily visualize. Most dream (and waking) states are marked by a consistent frequency. The more alert and focused you are, the more the peaks and valleys ripple like a child’s drawing of the ocean. In deepest sleep, the waves slow down and flatten out. Most EEG patterns are regular and predictable. But this is not true of hypnagogia and hypnopompia.

These phases of consciousness that occur at the border between waking and sleep produce chaotic, inconsistent wave patterns. Your brain shudders up through a series of micro-awakenings then ricochets down toward sleep. The EEG jumps around, flattening, rippling, creating spindles and humps. Your body twitches around just like your brainwaves do. When you’re falling asleep and your arms or legs jolt involuntarily, you know you’re in hypnagogia.

Hypnagogia is particularly easy to work with if you’re looking for creative inspiration. Derived from the Greek hypnos, or sleep, and agogos (leading), the term translates literally to “leading into sleep.” You pass through it when you’re going to sleep at night, but also during naps or even when fighting extreme fatigue. You can work with it any time throughout the day, as long as you feel sleepy enough for a nap.

Two of the most impressive creative minds in Western history used hypnagogia to woo their muses. Salvador Dali, the imaginative, eccentric, and highly influential surrealist artist who worked in a wide range of media, used it to conjure and develop images. Thomas Edison, inventor of an amazingly large number of things central to our lives—including the phonograph, the light bulb, and the motion picture—used hypnagogia to help generate ideas and engage in creative problem solving. Interestingly, independently of each other, they came up with what is more or less the same exercise to harness hypnagogia. It’s very easy to reproduce. Next time you’re looking for creative inspiration, give it a shot.

Here’s how the exercise worked: when feeling tired, each man would sit in a chair holding something in one or both hands (Edison used balls in both hands, Dali a solid brass key in one hand) over metal plates placed on the floor that would produce a clanging sound when the handheld item dropped. Edison kept a pad nearby to write out ideas. Dali kept a sketchpad. Each would sit in the chair and start to drift off, entering a liminal dream state. As they passed out of hypnagogia and started to fall into deeper sleep, they would drop the key or balls onto the metal plates, and the sound would wake them. Dali would then immediately sketch. Edison would jot down ideas.

You can easily adapt this practice to suit your own purposes. Psychologist Charles Tart came up with an alternative version of this practice in which, rather than hold something over metal plates, you simply raise one arm in the air. As you begin to drift into sleep, the arm will drop and wake you. When I follow this practice, I leave a voice-activated recorder—a phone app I purchased for less than five dollars—next to me. As soon as I re-enter consciousness, I start talking, and that sets the recorder going. You can learn more about working with dreams to enhance creativity from Deirdre Barrett’s book The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Dreams for Creative Problem Solving, and How You Can Too.

Liminal dreaming is an extraordinary state of mind. The experience lies somewhere between thought and hallucination, as your meandering mind rehashes and remixes abstract ideas and memories while slipping in and out of the visionary animation of the dream. In this edge realm between conscious and unconscious, you’ll discover the possibility of encountering your own visionary mind. We all have deep capacity for creativity. With a little attention and practice, you can deepen that relationship.

Jennifer Dumpert is a San Francisco–based writer and lecturer, the founder of the Oneironauticum, and a proponent of liminal dreaming (LiminalDreaming.com). She tweets a dream daily as @oneirofer. UrbanDreamscape.com

BY JENNIFER DUMPERT

What do you do when the weekend rolls around? For many people, it’s time to open a bottle of wine, smoke some pot, or even swallow something stronger for a deeper journey. Tweaking consciousness is hard-wired into the human experience. Little kids roll down hills and spin in circles. Adults take intoxicants to achieve altered states. We love to leave the everyday behind and experience ourselves in new ways. The impulse is natural, but many of us worry about the long-term adverse health effects, as well as next-day hangovers. But you don’t have to ingest poisons to play with your mind. Next time you have the urge to experiment with your consciousness, consider the original altered mind adventure: the dream. And if part of the fun involves taking substances to see how they affect you, try an oneirogen.

From the Greek oneiro (dream) and gen (to create) and pronounced “oh NIE ro jen,” it is any herb, root, sound, scent, or food that promotes vivid dreaming. Oneirogens range from teas used by indigenous cultures for divination to phone apps that entrain brainwaves.

Your dream life is deeply personal and unique, yet dreaming is a phenomenon shared by all people everywhere. Consciousness exploration goes hand in hand with community. From psychedelics to wine tasting clubs, we love to share the experience of spelunking our inner realms. If you’re looking to try oneirogens in company, consider joining the Oneironauticum.

Founded in January of 2008, the Oneironauticum is a worldwide intentional slumber party dedicated to the exploration of oneirogens. During each Oneironauticum event, a group gathers to sleep in the same place and try an oneirogen. On that same night, participants around the globe use the same oneirogen. In the morning, those gathered together eat breakfast and talk about their dreams. Remote participants Skype in or join a Google Hangout, or send their dreams by email. These dreams are saved on the Oneironauticum website, where they can be sorted by oneirogen.

People participate for a variety of reasons. Some want to learn lucid dreaming skills. Some seek healing dreams or pursue therapeutic use. We have participants who believe in oneiromancy, a kind of divination through dreams. Some participants try to meet each other in dream worlds. We also have practices that focus on promoting creativity and problem solving. For many of us—including me—the main purpose remains consciousness experimentation.

Over years of experimentation, the Oneironauticum community has developed a few favorite oneirogens. If you try any of these, keep in mind that not everything works for everyone. A lot of factors go into how well an oneirogen will work for any person. But it’s likely that at least one will resonate with you.

Calea Zacatechichi

This flowering plant is traditionally used by the Chontal natives indigenous to the Mexican state of Oaxaca for oneiromancy. They believe that dreams happen in realms beyond those we consciously perceive and that dreams can convey meaningful messages or prophecy. They further maintain that Calea clarifies the senses so the dreamer can more clearly perceive insights and bring them back into waking memory. Some people use Calea to induce lucid dreams. Calea is brewed into an astoundingly bitter tea or smoked.

Somnium

Most of your senses get shut down during sleep so you don’t act out your dreams. Hearing and smell remain active, however, making sound and scent excellent oneirogens.

During the 1980s, electronic musician Robert Rich performed a series of all-night concerts for sleeping Bay Area audiences. To maximize dreaming, he composed pieces that alternate sound textures to match the phases of sleep. The key of these pieces is to keep the mind as close to consciousness as possible without waking it. Somnium is a 7½ hour soundscape you play while asleep.

Binaural Beats

Although they’ve been around since the 1970s, binaural beats are undergoing a resurgence of interest thanks to phone apps that easily produce them. When two different frequencies—brainwave rhythms—are played in left and right ears through headphones, the brain falls into the rhythm of the difference between the frequencies, such as theta or alpha.

Binaural beats apps have settings for different sorts of dreams, such as lucid dreams. If you can’t sleep comfortably in headphones, look for an app that offers hypnagogic dreams, the incredible dream state between waking and sleeping.

Mugwort

Mugwort refers to several species of plants in the Artemisia genus. In Korean bath houses, mugwort soaked in water is poured over hot rocks at night to induce vivid dreams. Although it can be made into a tea, the Oneironauticum group works with mugwort as an olfactory oneirogen.

The scent of mugwort produces saga-length, intricately detailed dreams. It also improves dream recall. Make a sachet of dried mugwort and oil and place it near you while you sleep.

The next Oneironauticum happens on the night of December 9 in Oakland. Although the in-person group is already full, anyone can participate remotely. A talk about dreamwork will be live streamed at 10 p.m. on December 9, and digital dream sharing will happen at 10 a.m. on December 10. The oneirogen will be Robert Rich’s soundscape Somnium, available free on the Oneironauticum website for anyone who wants to participate.

Oneirogens also make wonderful holiday gifts. On the evening of Sunday, December 18, join me for a talk about oneirogens at Twisted Thistle Apothecary on Haight Street in San Francisco. The herbs and roots discussed will be for sale, along with information about how to use them to promote dreaming.

Jennifer Dumpert is a San Francisco–based writer and lecturer, and founder of the Oneironauticum. UrbanDreamscape.com