Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming

 The Wonders of Lucid Dreaming

I realized I was dreaming. I raised my arms and began to rise (actually, I was being lifted). I rose through black sky that blended to indigo, to deep purple, to lavender, to white, then to very bright light. All the time I was being lifted there was the most beautiful music I have ever heard. It seemed like voices rather than instruments. There are no words to describe the JOY I felt. I was very gently lowered back to earth. I had the feeling that I had come to a turning point in my life and I had chosen the right path. The dream, the joy I experienced, was kind of a reward, or so I felt. It was a long, slow slide back to wakefulness with the music echoing in my ears. The euphoria lasted several days; the memory, forever. (A. F., Bay City, Michigan)

I was standing in a field in an open area when my wife pointed in the direction of the sunset. I looked at it and thought, ““How odd; I’ve never seen colors like that before.” Then it dawned on me: ““I must be dreaming!” Never had I experienced such clarity and perception –– the colors were so beautiful and the sense of freedom so exhilarating that I started racing through this beautiful golden wheat field waving my hands in the air and yelling at the top of my voice, ““I’m dreaming! I’m dreaming!” Suddenly, I started to lose the dream; it must have been the excitement, I instantly woke up. As it dawned on me what had just happened, I woke my wife and said, ““I did it, I did it!” I was conscious within the dream state and I’ll never be the same. Funny, isn’t it? How a taste of it can affect one like that. It’s the freedom, I guess; we see that we truly are in control of our own universe. (D. W., Elk River, Minnesota)

I am studying to become a professional musician (French horn), and I wished to remove my fear of performing in front of people. On several occasions I placed myself in a state of self hypnosis/daydreaming by relaxing my entire body and mind before going to sleep. Then I focused on my desire to have a dream in which I was performing for a large audience by myself but was not nervous or suffering from any anxiety. On the third night of this experiment, I had a lucid dream in which I was performing a solo recital without accompaniment at Orchestra Hall in Chicago (a place where I have performed once before, but in a full orchestra). I felt no anxiety regarding the audience, and every note that I played made me feel even more confident. I played perfectly a piece that I had heard only once before (and never attempted to play), and the ovation I received added to my confidence. When I woke up, I made a quick note of the dream and the piece that I played. While practicing the next day, I sight-read the piece and

played it nearly perfectly. Two weeks (and a few lucid dream performances) later, I performed Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony with the orchestra. For the first time, nerves did not hamper my playing, and the performance went extremely well. (J. S., Mt. Prospect, Illinois)

Strange, marvelous, and even impossible things regularly happen in dreams, but people usually don’t realize that the explanation is that they are dreaming. Usually doesn’t mean always and there is a highly significant exception to this generalization. Sometimes, dreamers do correctly realize the explanation for the bizarre happenings they are experiencing, and lucid dreams, like those recounted above, are the result.

Empowered by the knowledge that the world they are experiencing is a creation of their own imagination, lucid dreamers can consciously influence the outcome of their dreams. They can create and transform objects, people, situations, worlds, even themselves. By the standards of the familiar world of physical and social reality, they can do the impossible.

The world of lucid dreams provides a vaster stage than ordinary life for almost anything imaginable, from the frivolous to the sublime. You could, if you chose, revel at a saturnalian festival, soar to the stars, or travel to mysterious lands. You could join those who are testing lucid dreaming as a tool for problem solving, self-healing, and personal growth. Or you could explore the implications of teachings from ancient traditions and reports from modern psychologists that suggest that lucid dreams can help you find your deepest identity –– who you really are.

Lucid dreaming has been known for centuries, but has until recently remained a rare and little understood phenomenon. My own scientific and personal explorations, together with the findings of other dream researchers around the world, have just begun to shed light on this unusual state of consciousness. Recently, this new research field has captured the attention of the population outside the world of scientific dream research because studies have shown that given proper training, people can learn to have lucid dreams.

But why are people interested in learning to be conscious in their dreams? According to my own experience, and the testimony of thousands of other lucid dreamers, lucid dreams can be extraordinarily vivid, intense, pleasurable, and exhilarating. People frequently consider their lucid dreams as among the most wonderful experiences of their lives.

If this were all there were to it, lucid dreams would be delightful, but ultimately trivial entertainment. However, as many have already discovered, you can use lucid dreaming to improve the quality of your waking life. Thousands of people have written to me at Stanford telling how they are using the knowledge and experience they have acquired in lucid dreams to help them get more out of living.

Although the outlines of a practical art and science of lucid dreaming are just beginning to emerge and the systematic use of lucid dreaming as a tool for psychological self-exploration is still in its infancy, most people can safely use the available knowledge about lucid dreaming to conduct their own explorations. Probably

the only people who should not experiment with lucid dreaming are those who are unable to distinguish between waking reality and constructions of their imagination. Learning lucid dreaming will not cause you to lose touch with the difference between waking and dreaming. On the contrary, lucid dreaming is for becoming more aware.

Why This New Book?

In Lucid Dreaming, I collected the available knowledge on the subject from both ancient and modern sources. Since that book’s publication, some ten thousand people have written to me describing their experiences and discoveries, and requesting more practical information about lucid dreaming. In response to those requests, I decided to collaborate on a new book with Howard Rheingold. Howard has written extensively on topics such as creativity, consciousness, and dreamwork.

Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming is a self-teaching curriculum, a step-by- step method for learning to have and use lucid dreams. You can learn at your own pace, and to your own depth, how to explore your lucid dreams and use them to enrich your life. You will read a rich variety of examples of actual lucid dreams excerpted from letters to the Stanford program, like the three quoted at the beginning of this chapter. While the kind of ““anecdotal evidence” offered by these nonprofessional dream explorers cannot replace the carefully controlled experimentation that is required for testing scientific theories, it does offer invaluable inspiration for continued exploration of the world of lucid dreaming.

Since Lucid Dreaming, my research team has continued its laboratory work at Stanford University, mapping mind/body relationships during the dream state and, in Courses and workshops with volunteer oneironauts (pronounced oh-NIGH-ro-knots, meaning ““explorers of the dream world”), studying techniques for inducing, prolonging, and using lucid dreams.1 This book draws on a number of sources of knowledge about lucid dreaming, including the Stanford research, the teachings of Tibetan dream yogis, and the work of other scientists. The investigations of the German psychologist Paul Tholey, who been studying lucid dreams for the past twenty years, have been particularly valuable in writing this book.

Our Approach

This book strives to present, in a step-by-step manner, everything you need to know in order to learn the skill of lucid dreaming. All the many techniques and exercises presented work for some people, but how effective each exercise will be for you depends on your individual psychology and physiology. Experiment with the exercises, test them for yourself, and see what works best for you.

The basic structure of the book is as follows: You will be guided through preparations for learning to have lucid dreams, provided with plainly spelled out

techniques for learning lucid dreaming, and then shown how lucid dreaming can be applied to your life. If you practice diligently, the lucid dream induction techniques should significantly increase your frequency of lucid dreaming. Chapter 5 presents the relevant scientific background and theory to help you understand the basis for the applications. The remaining chapters are devoted to describing how you can use lucid dreaming to enhance your life, both waking and sleeping. Examples selected from our compendium of lucid dreams illustrate what others have achieved, to model for you some of the potentials of lucid dreaming.

As far as we know, this is the first time that detailed instructions on lucid dreaming have been widely available to the general public. However, you are not likely to learn lucid dreaming by quickly skimming through this book. Like most anything else worth learning, lucid dreaming requires effort. Motivation is an essential pre requisite; you have to really want to do it and make sufficient time to practice. If you persevere with the exercises and procedures, we are confident that you will increase your proficiency at lucid dreaming.

Outline of the Book

This chapter reviews reasons for learning to become lucid in your dreams and describes the contents of this book.

Chapter 2: ““Preparation for Learning Lucid Dreaming” provides necessary background information on sleep and helps you overcome any reservations you might have about lucid dreaming that could inhibit your progress. Next, it helps you get acquainted with your dreams. You will learn how to begin a dream journal and how to increase your dream recall. You should be able to recall at least one dream per night before attempting lucid dream induction techniques. When you have a dream journal with several entries, you will be ready to build a catalog of dreamsigns. These are the characteristic features of dreams that you can use as signposts to lucidity.

Chapter 3: ““Waking Up in the Dream World” discusses techniques for realizing you are dreaming from within the dream. The two major techniques presented are the reflection-intention technique, which is based on the practice of questioning whether you are awake or dreaming, and MILD, the technique I used to learn to lucid dreams at will. MILD trains you to remember to notice when you are dreaming.

Chapter 4: ““Falling Asleep Consciously” describes techniques for entering the lucid dream state directly from the waking state.

Chapter 5: ““The Building of Dreams” provides a solid background on the origins and nature of the dreaming process and discusses lucid dreaming in the context of dreams in general.

Chapter 6: ““Principles and Practice of Lucid Dreaming” shows you how to gain control over the dream: how to remain in a lucid dream, how to awaken when you wish and how to manipulate and observe the dream world. In addition to explaining methods of exercising power over the dream, we discuss the benefits inherent in taking an open, flexible, and non-commanding role in lucid dreams.

Chapter 7: ““Adventures and Explorations” shows how you can use lucid dreaming for wish fulfillment and the satisfaction of your desires. Examples and suggestions are provided to help you explore new worlds or enact exciting adventures in your dreams, and show how you can tie your dream adventures into your personal self-development.

Chapter 8: ““Rehearsal for Living” explains how lucid dreaming can be a practical tool for preparing for your waking life. Lucid dreaming can be used as a

““flight simulator” for life, a way in which you can test new ways of living, as well as particular skills. Practice in the dream state can contribute to enhanced experience, improved performance, and deepened understanding in waking life.

Chapter 9: ““Creative Problem Solving” discusses lucid dreaming as a fruitful source of creativity for art, science, business, and personal life. Diverse examples show how people have used lucid dreaming to find a name for a soon-to-be-born child, to repair cars, and to understand abstract mathematical concepts.

Chapter 10: ““Overcoming Nightmares” helps you use lucid dreaming to face and overcome fears and inhibitions that may be preventing you from getting the most out of your life. Lucid dreamers can overcome nightmares, and in so doing learn how to make the best of the worst situations imaginable.

Chapter 11: ““The Healing Dream” shows how lucid dreamers can achieve more integrated, healthier personalities. Lucid dreams can help those who have unresolved conflicts from past or present relationships, or with deceased friends or family members. Also, in lucid dreams, we can learn mental flexibility. Because nothing can harm us in dreams, we can try to solve our problems in unusual or unheard of ways. This helps us to increase our repertoire of possible behaviors in the waking world, thereby decreasing the probability of getting stuck in situations we don’t know how to cope with.

Chapter 12: ““Life Is a Dream: Intimations of a Wider World” takes a step beyond the application of lucid dreaming to your everyday life, and shows how lucid dreams can be used to attain a more complete understanding of yourself and your relation to the world. In the dream you are who you ““dream yourself to be,” and understanding this can help you see to what extent your waking self is limited by your own conceptions of who you are. Examples of transcendental experiences in lucid dreams will show you a direction that you might wish to explore in your own inner worlds.

The book ends with an afterword (““The Adventure Continues”) inviting you to join the Lucidity Institute, a membership society devoted to advancing knowledge on the nature and potentials of lucid dreaming.

Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D. & Howard Rheingold