Vajrayana Buddhism for Westerners with Andrew Holecek

Andrew Holecek was trained for decades within the Tibetan Buddhist traditions of Dzogchen and Mahamudra, and having completed the traditional three-year retreat. He is the author of numerous influential books, including Dream Yoga, The Lucid Dreaming Workbook, Preparing to Die, Dreams of Light, and his newest work is Total Eclipse of the Mind: Unleashing the Power of Darkness for Creativity, Healing and Transformation. His website is https://www.andrewholecek.com/ Andrew explores Vajrayana Buddhism as a living transformational path for modern Westerners, drawing from decades of Tibetan Buddhist training, dream yoga, sleep yoga, and dark retreat practice. He discusses lucidity, the dreamlike nature of reality, the states of consciousness associated with waking, dreaming, dying, and deep sleep, and how these experiences can cultivate wisdom, compassion, and awakening. Holecek also examines emptiness, non-dual awareness, the bardos, lucid dreaming, and the integration of psychology, spirituality, and consciousness studies into everyday life. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:02:44 Andrew’s journey into Vajrayana Buddhism 00:06:42 Three-year retreat and meditative discipline 00:11:03 Consciousness, contraction, and openness 00:19:05 Dream yoga and spiritual practice in daily life 00:25:56 Lucid dreaming and the nature of reality 00:31:31 Sleep yoga and deep dreamless awareness 00:42:28 Dreamers, perception, and non-dual awareness 00:49:07 Bardos, death, and ritual phenomenology 01:02:10 Conclusion New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in "parapsychology" ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on May 18, 2026) For a complete, updated list with links to all of our videos, see https://newthinkingallowed.com/Listin.... Check out the New Thinking Allowed Foundation website at http://www.newthinkingallowed.org. There you will find our incredible, searchable database as well as opportunities to shop and to support our video productions – plus, this is where people can subscribe to our FREE, weekly Newsletter and can download a FREE .pdf copy of our quarterly magazine. To order high-quality, printed copies of our quarterly magazine: NTA-Magazine.MagCloud.com Check out New Thinking Allowed's AI chatbot. You can create a free account at awakin.ai/open/jeffreymishlove. When you enter the space, you will see that our chatbot is one of several you can interact with. While it is still a work in progress, it has been trained on 1,600 NTA transcripts. It can provide intelligent answers about the contents of our interviews. It's almost like having a conversation with Jeffrey Mishlove. If you would like to join our team of volunteers, helping to promote the New Thinking Allowed YouTube channel on social media, editing and translating videos, creating short video trailers based on our interviews, helping to upgrade our website, or contributing in other ways (we may not even have thought of), please send an email to [email protected]. To download and listen to audio versions of the New Thinking Allowed videos, please visit our new podcast at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/n.... Download and read Jeffrey Mishlove's Grand Prize essay in the Bigelow Institute competition, Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death, go to https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/docs.... You can help support our video productions while enjoying a good book. To order a copy of New Thinking Allowed Dialogues: Is There Life After Death? click on https://amzn.to/3LzLA7Y (As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.) To order the second book in the New Thinking Allowed Dialogues series, Russell Targ: Ninety Years of ESP, Remote Viewing, and Timeless Awareness, go to https://amzn.to/4aw2iyr To order a copy of New Thinking Allowed Dialogues: UFOs and UAP – Are We Really Alone?, go to https://amzn.to/3Y0VOVh To order a copy of Charles T. Tart: Seventy Years of Exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology, go to https://amzn.to/4oOUJLn