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The Yellow Emperor Learns to Dream

By Robert Moss

The Book of Lieh-tzu, translated by A.C.Graham. Columbia University Press. 192 pages. Trade paperback. $24.95.

The Taoist adepts of China were renowned for the ability to travel between worlds. They were sometimes known as “crane riders” in reference to one of their preferred modes of transportation. In The Book of Lieh-tzu – the third and least-known of the Taoist classics (with the Tao Te Ching and the book of Chuang-tzu) – dreaming is quite literally the royal road to knowledge of higher worlds, and the preferred path into the afterlife.

The most interesting material on dreams is a story of a dream journey by the Yellow Emperor and the collection of tales in the chapter titled "King Mu of Chou".

The Yellow Emperor found in a dream what he had been unable to find in meditation and ascetic practice - full access to a spiritual realm beyond the setting sun, whose inhabitants "ride space as though walking the solid earth". Winged by his knowledge, he reputedly "rose into the sky" at the end of his reign.

The story of King Mu is an interesting variant on the theme that "life is a dream". Holding on to the sleeve of a powerful magician, he travels to an amazing pleasure-palace above the clouds and enjoys himself there tremendously for "twenty or thirty years" before the magician invited him to go to a higher place, which he finds terrifying (because he is clearly not ready!). He is hurled back into his own palace to find only seconds of ordinary time have elapsed.

Instead of dismissing the dream journey as illusion, the author leads us to reflect that the dream world is no less real (or unreal) than the physical world and that for many of us the great game is to approach all experience as if it might be a dream - and have the malleability and magic of the dream world.

Other stories are pleasant parables, good for unsettling the routine mind: In a certain country, people wake only once every fifty days and regard their waking experiences as dreams. In another tale, servant and master swap roles in their dreams every night; who is happier? Such stories help to free our imaginations and shift us beyond consensual hallucinations about what is real and important in life.