Dream-Over at the Rubin

I stumbled upon this article about 85 people that had the opportunity to spend the night in The Rubin Museum of Art in New York City on the night of October 15^th – a grown up “Night at the Museum”.  The Rubin is a museum that is “dedicated to the collection, display, and preservation of the art and cultures of the Himalayas, India and neighboring regions, with a permanent collection focused particularly on Tibetan art.”  The museum holds an event called “Dream-Over – A Sleepover for Adults”, where individuals and couples could purchase a ticket to come and spend the night under a work of art that was carefully chosen for them.  The works of art were paired with the individual based on responses to questions (posed by the museum) such as: “Why are you attending Dream-Over?,” “What color resonates most with you?,” and, the whopper, “What are the three most important experiences in your life?” 

Upon arrival at 9pm, docents took the participants to the piece of artwork they were paired with to sleep under for the night.  The guests all gathered and listened to two speakers (Vanessa Sinclair, a psychoanalyst with an interest in art, spirituality, and the occult, and Khenpo Lama Pema Wangdak, a Buddhist Lama originally from Tibet) have a conversation to try and explain the role of dreams in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and spoke about how sleeping in the creative and spiritual environment of the Rubin could have a different effect on the brain and therefore in their dreams, if the guests were open to it. Khenpo Lama Pema Wangdak stated: “The main thing is, you will yourself to dream,” explained Lama Pema. “Tonight, you might go to sleep and imagine the universe as a pure, translucent light. Over your head, you have your babysitter, which is the Buddha. You’re the baby,” he laughed. “And you’ll have the most peaceful, satisfying, curled-up kind of dream, because you’ve willed it. That’s the most important thing.” 

Bedtime stories were read and lullabies were played and then it was time for the participants to go to sleep and try to dream.  Around 6am, individually everyone was woken up and while they were in an in-between state of asleep and awake each participant was asked about their dream by a “dream gatherer” – artists and psychologists tasked with waking the guests up and talking them through their dreams.

This idea that “art might just be able to unlock chambers of our subconscious, if we were open to it,” brings me back to a previous blog post I’ve made about Neurotheology.  Neurotheology is a concept researched by Andrew Newberg about brain activity and the effects meditation has on the brain.  Newberg has “studied the brain activity of experienced Tibetan Buddhists before and during meditation," and has found that there is increased activity in the frontal lobes, which is "responsible for focusing attention and concentration, during meditation".  I think that the conversation that was held to kick off the “Dream-Over” and this process and experience as a whole has a lot to do with the concept of Neurotheology.  I find the parallel between Newberg’s subjects being Tibetan Buddhists and the fact that this took place at the Rubin with a Tibetan Buddhist speaker fascinating.  I think that the process of letting a person sleep and then waking them up and talking them through their dream is a very similar, less scientific, route to Newberg’s process of doing brain scans before and after meditation to compare brain activity.  Reading this article helped me work through some of my initial questions I had after learning about Neurotheology.  I’m still curious to do more research on these topics to find out more about how specifically art and meditation can affect the brain.