Tibetan Buddhist Beliefs
The Tibetan Buddhists believe that dreams are practice for realizing illusions after death. It is of utmost importance for aspirants to cultivate the ability to dream lucidly. The Tibetans believe that through cultivating lucidity in dreams while alive, it is easier to perceive the Bardo Worlds for the illusions that they are. The Bardo Worlds are what happens after death for about forty days. At first, the Bardo Worlds are pleasant and seductive. However, toward the end, they begin to disintegrate and become nightmarish. Demons appear, the happiness is gone, comfort is gone, and the entity experiencing all this becomes frightened and wants to escape if he or she does not recognize the Bardo Worlds as illusion. The entity runs back to incarnation in order to escape the Bardo Worlds, instead of attaining nirvana, freedom and final oneness with the Source. According to the Tibetan Buddhists, nirvana, freedom from the re-incarnational wheel, can only be achieved by overcoming the dream illusion, fear, and the Bardo Worlds.
Dream demons appear from the discarnate soul’s own fears, regrets and sins. This karma is not handed out by an external authority, but is created by the dreamer himself or herself by the self judging conscience within each being. The discarnate soul flees the Bardo Worlds by frantically searching for a copulating couple, slips between them, and re-enters the world in order to escape the self created demons, believing that they are real. The possibility of nirvana is lost, and the soul is once again incarnated into the world, driven by terror and the illusion of the Bardo Worlds.
The Tibetans believe that our nighttime dreams can be used to prepare us for our final challenge after death when we must face the Bardo Worlds. They see lucid dreaming as the ultimate exercise in learning how to deal with illusion. It is the highest order of importance in spiritual discipline. Sleep is like a “little death” and dreams give us the chance to practice how we will handle the Bardo Worlds upon physical death. The experience of lucid dreaming allows us to change our relationship with death itself.
Spiritual aspirants in the Tibetan traditions are taught to stay calm and unmoving when frightening characters appear in dreams, and thus also to act the same in the Bardo Worlds after death. This is the most important thing to learn. This also applies to waking life, in Tibetan Buddhist traditions.