The Dreamer's Book of the Dead: A Soul Traveler's Guide to Death, Dying, and the Other Side [Paperback]

Robert Moss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2005

A guidebook for communicating with the departed and gaining first-hand knowledge of life beyond death

• Reveals that the easiest way to communicate with the departed is through dreams

• Offers methods for helpful and timely communication with deceased loved ones

• Provides powerful Active Dreaming practices from ancient and indigenous cultures for journeying beyond the gates of death for wisdom and healing

We yearn for contact with departed loved ones. We miss them, ache for forgiveness or closure, and long for confirmation that there is life beyond physical death. In The Dreamer’s Book of the Dead, Robert Moss explains that we have entirely natural contact with the departed in our dreams, when they come visiting and we may travel into their realms. As we become active dreamers, we can heal our relationship with the departed and move beyond the fear of death. We also can develop the skills to function as soul guides for others, helping the dying to approach the last stage of life with courage and grace, opening gates for their journeys beyond death, and even escorting them to the Other Side.

Drawing on a wealth of personal experience as well as many ancient and indigenous traditions, Moss offers stories to inspire us and guide us. He shares his extraordinary visionary relationship with the poet W. B. Yeats, whose greatest ambition was to create a Western Book of the Dead, to feed the soul hunger of our times. Moss teaches us the truth of Chief Seattle’s statement that "there is no death; we just change worlds."

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The Dreamer’s Book of the Dead is one of the finest books I have read in many a year. It offers deep and healing insight into the journey beyond death, which will be a help to anyone who has lost a loved one. More than that it offers wisdom for living our lives in powerful and spirit-filled ways. With each new book, but especially with this one, Robert Moss adds to his reputation as one of the greatest spiritual teachers of our time. Outstanding!”
(David Spangler, author of Blessing: The Art and the Practice and Everyday Miracles )

“Since time immemorial, dreams of the dead have been a common occurrence. Our scientifically based culture has attempted to close this door of communication, but has failed; dreams of the dead continue to occur, as always. Robert Moss sheds light on how to enter this doorway and benefit from the wisdom and comfort that often result from these experiences.”
(Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words, Recovering the Soul, and The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things )

“Robert Moss’s ambition to give us a Western Book of the Dead has been fully realized in this captivating and inspiring guide to the land of the dead. Moss shocks and thrills by revealing the hidden truth--that the Otherworld is in fact the familiar landscape of our dreams, where we go every night. There we can, if we intend it, meet up with our lost loved ones and encounter the great mentors of the past. Moss’s own mentor is the great Irish poet W. B. Yeats, with whom he has in-depth, meaningful conversations.

“Moss reminds us that by our night dreaming and waking dreams we prepare for the great journey to the world beyond the mists the Celts call the Blessed Isles. Our dreams are the measure of what we aspire to, and it is in this life, through practicing our imagination, that we can draw our roadmap and our destination. For a better death and life beyond death--but also for a better life in the world of the living--do not miss this extraordinary book from a true Western Master.”
(Catherine Shainberg, author of Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming )

“An important work for a world in which we quickly dispose of our dead and move on--or don’t, being left isolated with our grief in the only existence we know. Robert Moss shows us how false a view this is. He opens us to the other side of life--to our multi-dimensional existence through which we travel every night. Learn to become a voyager of the imagination where you can meet with loved ones and guides in a place as true as this one. Take a guided tour of the land of the dead, as recorded by explorers through the centuries. Learn how to communicate with and assist the dead and let them help you.

“This book is filled with stories from people who have taken Moss’s workshops and discovered for themselves the knowledge and serenity that comes from contact with the other side. It also reveals the mentoring relationship that Moss established with William Butler Yeats, demonstrating how such a communion with spirits (whether within or without) can be a source of strength and encouragement. An inspiring book that should be close at hand for whenever the other world comes calling or we have need of knowledge of the other side.”
(Mary K. Greer, author of Women of the Golden Dawn and Tarot for Your Self )

"Here are tools and guidance to help truly begin to heal that relationship with death/dying."
(Victoria Vlach, Dream Network, Autumn 2005 )

"I found this to be an important work for anyone who wishes to work with dreamtime, for what ever reason. . . . it gives the reader a way to go into their dreams, to become a part of their dreams, and to make their dreams work for them. If you want to work with your dreams, and you want to understand the death experience, then this is the book for you."
(Bonnie Cehovet, Angelfire.com, Jan 2006 )

"Moss is a compelling, generous teacher with an astonishing depth and breadth of esoteric knowledge. Approach The Dreamer’s Book of the Dead when you’re ready to go slowly and absorb its heady, powerful themes and meditations."
(Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Book ?em, May 12, 2005 )

"This nonfiction book is identified as a soul traveler's guide to death, dying, and the other side, and it is precisely that! It has a gusto and life all its own. Robert Moss is to be congratulated on a fine work, one that is informative and enjoyable to read."
(Lee Prosser, Ghostvillage.com, Jan.11, 2006 )

"Dreamer's Book of the Dead is nearly an escort service, offering insights on dreams, the afterlife, and healing."
(The Midwest Book Review, May 2006 )

"It's a book which lingers in the back of your mind for a long time after you've read it. Don't give it away. . . "
(Marilis Hornidge, Book Bag, March 23, 2006 )

"[This book] is an amazing resource for dreamers, mediums, and others who would dive deep into their spiritual relationship with the precious gift of mortality."
(Sara Sutterfield Winn, PanGaia, Autumn 2007 )

From the Back Cover

NEW AGE / DREAMS

“In this captivating and inspiring guide to the land of the dead, Moss shocks and thrills by revealing the hidden truth--that the Otherworld is in fact the familiar landscape of our dreams, where we go every night. For a better death and life ­beyond death, do not miss this extraordinary book.”
--Catherine Shainberg, author of Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming

“An important work for a world in which we quickly dispose of our dead and move on. Learn to become a voyager of the imagination where you can meet with loved ones and guides in a place as true as this one.”
--Mary K. Greer, author of Women of the Golden Dawn and Tarot for Your Self

We yearn for contact with departed loved ones. We miss them, ache for forgive­ness or closure, and long for confirmation that there is life beyond physical death. In The Dreamer’s Book of the Dead, Robert Moss explains that we have entirely natural contact with the departed in our dreams, when they come visiting and we may travel into their realms. As we become active dreamers, we can heal our relationship with the departed and move beyond the fear of death. We also can develop the skills to function as soul guides for others, helping the dying to approach the last stage of life with courage and grace, opening gates for their journeys beyond death, and even escorting them to the Other Side.

Drawing on a wealth of personal experience as well as many ancient and indigenous traditions, Moss offers stories to inspire us and guide us. He shares his extraordinary visionary relationship with the poet W. B. Yeats, whose greatest ambition was to create a Western Book of the Dead to feed the soul hunger of our times. Moss teaches us the truth of Chief Seattle’s statement that “there is no death; we just change worlds.”

ROBERT MOSS survived three near-death experiences in childhood and has been dreaming with the departed all of his life. He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanic techniques for empowerment and healing. A former university professor of ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a novelist, shamanic counselor, and the author of Conscious Dreaming, Dreamgates, and Dreamways of the Iroquois. He lives in upstate New York.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Destiny Books (October 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594770379
• ISBN-13: 978-1594770371
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #394,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Moss is the pioneer of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of shamanism and modern dreamwork. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming and a lively online dream school. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His eight books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates and Active Dreaming: Journeying beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom.

Moss describes himself as "a dream teacher, on a path for which there has been no career track in our culture." He identifies the great watershed in his adult life as a sequence of visionary events that unfolded in 1987-1988, after he decided to leave the world of big cities and the fast-track life of a popular novelist (already the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including Moscow Rules) and put down roots on a farm in the upper Hudson Valley of New York. Moss started dreaming in a language he did not know that proved to be an archaic form of the Mohawk language. Helped by native speakers to interpret his dreams, Moss came to believe that they had put him in touch with an ancient healer - a woman of power - and that they were calling him to a different life.

Out of these experiences he wrote a series of historical novels (The Firekeeper, Fire Along the Sky, The Interpreter) and developed the practice he calls Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of contemporary dreamwork and shamanic methods of journeying and healing. A central premise of Moss's approach is that dreaming isn't just what happens during sleep; dreaming is waking up to sources of guidance, healing and creativity beyond the reach of the everyday mind.He introduced his method to an international audience as an invited presenter at the conference of the Association for the Study of Dreams at the University of Leiden in 1994.

Core techniques of Active Dreaming include

The "lightning dreamwork" process, designed to facilitate quick dream-sharing that results in helpful action; the use of the "if it were my dream" protocol encourages the understanding that the dreamer is always the final authority on his or her dream
Dream reentry: the practice of making a conscious journey back inside a dream in order to clarify information, dialogue with a dream character, or move beyond nightmare terrors into healing and resolution
Tracking and group dreaming: conscious dream travel on an agreed itinerary by two or more partners, often supported by shamanic drumming
Navigating by synchronicity: reading coincidence and "symbolic pop-ups" in ordinary life as "everyday oracles".

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fanning the Faery Fire, November 19, 2005

By 

rain cloud (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Dreamer's Book of the Dead: A Soul Traveler's Guide to Death, Dying, and the Other Side (Paperback)

I think our ancestors knew some things we've forgotten. I'm not sure WHY we forgot but it's definitely time to start remembering. This is the third or fourth book by Robert Moss I've read and he always stirs me in ways I can't fully express.

This book reminded me of one morning when I was ten and I got up and found my grandmother crying. I asked her why and she recounted a dream that she'd had thirty years earlier that had accurately predicted the death of her only son.

All of our lives are full of such anomalies, such little bits of magic, until we quickly sweep them under the carpet.

Conscensus reality is like a carefully constructed stage set we all agree to believe in--until we see some pipes or wiring sticking out where they shouldn't be. We quickly scissor those moments out of our awareness because they don't fit.

Those moments are what this book is about.

"The Dreamer's Book of the Dead" reminded me of another book I read called "Lincoln's unknown private life, an oral history by his black housekeeper." At one point in this book this very ancient black lady (who reminded me of rosa parks) reported discussing the after-life with Lincoln and concluded by saying, "When you get right down to it, the only thing Mr. Lincoln REALLY believed in was dreams."

Indeed. Interesting an iconic figure like Lincoln, at the center of our culture, should hold views like that--and yet nobody ever talks about it. It's swept under the carpet.

This is a book about bringing things OUT from under that cultural carpet, a book about remembering things our ancestors knew.

My point is this--Moss's book says that being visited by the dead in dreams is something our ancestors accepted. Then he takes you on a very entertaining spiritual tour of the various imaginal realms where the dead might reside (and into which we will all be moving before too long).

He weaves that together with several colorful threads: the mystical beliefs of that arch-romantic William Butler Yeats, and that fascinating gathering of geniuses, cranks and visionaries known as The Golden Dawn who revived western magic in the early twentieth century.

It's not all entertainment, though, he offers practical advice on how to deal with spirits or ghosts in various stages of stuckness in the after-life. (Advice I hope I never personally need).

As always he mentions, in passing, things that fascinate and tweak the imagination--for example, british magicians (golden dawn?) battling nazi occultists during world war two. (Ha! What could be more fun than that?)

But what I really enjoyed about this was the sense that you journey back into the ancestral mists to revisit the spiritual beliefs that sustained our celtic ancestors for uncounted centuries before the coming of Christianity. That's actually one of the things about this I resonated to most strongly.

And, as he makes clear, encounters with spirits (humans who are "dead"), faeries (non-human energies), and various magical beings isn't really uncommon.

If you think about your life, you've had such encounters. It's just that we live in an era when we are encouraged to screen such anomalies out of our awareness (that cultural rug again).

How sad and how boring.

It denies a large part of who and what we are. Wouldn't you really rather open the door to the wider reality? What if we spun that oppressive cultural rug into a flying carpet?

If you agree, Moss will give you flying lessons.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the path of the soul after death is the path of the soul in dreams, October 16, 2005

By 

Seattle Dreamer - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dreamer's Book of the Dead: A Soul Traveler's Guide to Death, Dying, and the Other Side (Paperback)

In his new book, "Dreamer's Book of the Dead", Robert Moss puts forth the startling theory that the path of the soul after death is the path of the soul in dreams. Drawing upon personal stories of his own dreams, as well as those of thousands of people who have attended his workshops, Moss makes a compelling argument that we don't need to wait for death to remember what the soul knows: how and why we came into our present bodies and where we will go when we leave them. An incredible book - I intend to share it broadly with friends and family!

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When the Dead Come Calling - by Wanda Burch, author of She Who Dreams, www.wandaburch.com, October 18, 2005

By 

Wanda Burch "Wanda Burch" (Fultonville, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dreamer's Book of the Dead: A Soul Traveler's Guide to Death, Dying, and the Other Side (Paperback)

In THE DREAMER'S BOOK OF THE DEAD, Robert Moss works his best magic, weaving a cultural tapestry across time and space, reminding each of us that "when the dead come calling" we are reviewing our own shadowed fears, pleasures and personal mythology against very real visions, belief systems, and dreams of death, confirming the haunting - and sometimes downright spooky - beauty of each story, thereby enhancing its wisdom, warning, and message to us - the living. Robert Moss' writing gives each story's mystery a firm place in the readers' own dreams/lives and unravels meaning without destroying fantasy, wonder, or beauty. Every reader will recognize these stories as their own - from visits from dead relatives to the song of the Bean Sidhe turned to terrifying death wail upon a soul's departure.

Robert honors the story of my own father's death, which I tell in my book SHE WHO DREAMS - with fresh perspective, reminding me that dreams of healing between myself and my father became an important emotional bridge during my illness when he appeared in my dreams as a guide, warning me of illness, gifting me with spiritual blessings, and then assisting me when he appeared in my dreams during my recovery.

Robert also opens his heart and shares his own personal stories, including a profound visionary and intellectual relationship with William Butler Yeats, who mentors and guides Robert into a mysterious realm outside the physical world, which is as real as the conversations between the two as they compare notes and discoveries in a complex structure Robert calls the House of Time. In this magic library we can all join the great poets and writers and eavesdrop on Robert's conversations with Yeats as they confirm our personal dreams and visions and give us the confidence to pay attention to our experiences even when we think them a little on the scary or way out side. If Yeats and Robert Moss can sit in a library in the House of Time and invite us all to scan the shelves and find our own favorite writer or poet and explore the path of our own soul before and after death, then perhaps we really can sit down with the departed - after a bit of instruction on death-after-life etiquette and appropriate role-playing with the living - and find the stories of our lives in shared experiences through dreams, visions and visitations from family and friends who wish to keep in touch - or maybe just check in now and then.