lucid dreaming

1:I have never been awake before. ~ Stephen LaBerge, Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life,

2:Wake-Initiated Lucid Dreams (WILDS)
In the last chapter we talked about strategies for inducing lucid dreams by carrying an idea from the waking world into the dream, such as an intention to comprehend the dream state, a habit of critical state testing, or the recognition of a dreamsign. These strategies are intended to stimulate a dreamer to become lucid within a dream.
This chapter presents a completely different set of approaches to the world of lucid dreaming based on the idea of falling asleep consciously. This involves retaining consciousness while wakefulness is lost and allows direct entry into the lucid dream state without any loss of reflective consciousness. The basic idea has many variations.
While falling asleep, you can focus on hypnagogic (sleep onset) imagery, deliberate visualizations, your breath or heartbeat, the sensations in your body, your sense of self, and so on. If you keep the mind sufficiently active while the tendency to enter REM sleep is strong, you feel your body fall asleep, but you, that is to say, your consciousness, remains awake. The next thing you know, you will find yourself in the dream world, fully lucid.
These two different strategies for inducing lucidity result in two distinct types of lucid dreams. Experiences in which people consciously enter dreaming sleep are referred to as wake-initiated lucid dreams (WILDs), in contrast to dream-initiated lucid dreams (DILDs), in which people become lucid after having fallen asleep unconsciously. 1 The two kinds of lucid dreams differ in a number of ways. WILDs always happen in association with brief awakenings (sometimes only one or two seconds long) from and immediate return to REM sleep. The sleeper has a subjective impression of having been awake. This is not true of DILDs. Although both kinds of lucid dream are more likely to occur later in the night, the proportion of WILDs also increases with time of night. In other words, WILDs are most likely to occur the late morning hours or in afternoon naps. This is strikingly evident in my own record of lucid dreams. Of thirty-three lucid dreams from the first REM period of the night, only one (3 percent) was a WILD, compared with thirteen out of thirty-two (41 percent) lucid dreams from afternoon naps. 2 Generally speaking, WILDs are less frequent than DILDs; in a laboratory study of seventy-six lucid dreams, 72 percent were DILDs compared with 28 percent WILDs. 3 The proportion of WILDs observed in the laboratory seems, by my experience, to be considerably higher than the proportion of WILDs reported at home.
To take a specific example, WILDs account for only 5 percent of my home record of lucid dreams, but for 40 percent of my first fifteen lucid dreams in the laboratory. 4 Ibelieve there are two reasons for this highly significant difference: whenever I spentthe night in the sleep laboratory, I was highly conscious of every time I awakened andI made extraordinary efforts not to move more than necessary in order to minimizeinterference with the physiological recordings.
Thus, my awakenings from REM in the lab were more likely to lead toconscious returns to REM than awakenings at home when I was sleeping with neitherheightened consciousness of my environment and self nor any particular intent not tomove. This suggests that WILD induction techniques might be highly effective underthe proper conditions.
Paul Tholey notes that, while techniques for direct entry to the dream staterequire considerable practice in the beginning, they offer correspondingly greatrewards. 5 When mastered, these techniques (like MILD) can confer the capacity toinduce lucid dreams virtually at will. ~ Stephen LaBerge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, 4 - Falling Asleep Consciously,

3:Attention on Hypnagogic Imagery The most common strategy for inducing WILDs is to fall asleep while focusing on the hypnagogic imagery that accompanies sleep onset. Initially, you are likely to see relatively simple images, flashes of light, geometric patterns, and the like.

Gradually more complicated forms appear: faces, people, and finally entire scenes. 6

The following account of what the Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky called "half-dream states" provides a vivid example of what hypnagogic imagery can be like:

I am falling asleep. Golden dots, sparks and tiny stars appear and disappear before my eyes. These sparks and stars gradually merge into a golden net with diagonal meshes which moves slowly and regularly in rhythm with the beating of my heart, which I feel quite distinctly. The next moment the golden net is transformed into rows of brass helmets belonging to Roman soldiers marching along the street below. I hear their measured tread and watch them from the window of a high house in Galata, in Constantinople, in a narrow lane, one end of which leads to the old wharf and the Golden Horn with its ships and steamers and the minarets of Stamboul behind them. I hear their heavy measured tread, and see the sun shining on their helmets. Then suddenly I detach myself from the window sill on which I am lying, and in the same reclining position fly slowly over the lane, over the houses, and then over the Golden Horn in the direction of Stamboul. I smell the sea, feel the wind, the warm sun. This flying gives me a wonderfully pleasant sensation, and I cannot help opening my eyes. 7

Ouspensky's half-dream states developed out of a habit of observing the contents of his mind while falling asleep or in half-sleep after awakening from a dream. He notes that they were much easier to observe in the morning after awakening than before sleep at the beginning of the night and did not occur at all "without definite efforts." 8

Dr. Nathan Rapport, an American psychiatrist, cultivated an approach to lucid dreaming very similar to Ouspensky's: "While in bed awaiting sleep, the experimenter interrupts his thoughts every few minutes with an effort to recall the mental item vanishing before each intrusion that inquisitive attention." 9 This habit is continued sleep itself, with results like the following:

Brilliant lights flashed, and a myriad of sparkles twinkled from a magnificent cut glass chandelier. Interesting as any stage extravaganza were the many quaintly detailed figurines upon a mantel against the distant, paneled wall adorned in rococo.

At the right a merry group of beauties and gallants in the most elegant attire of Victorian England idled away a pleasant occasion. This scene continued for [a] period of I was not aware, before I discovered that it was not reality, but a mental picture and that I was viewing it. Instantly it became an incommunicably beautiful vision. It was with the greatest stealth that my vaguely awakened mind began to peep: for I knew that these glorious shows end abruptly because of such intrusions.

I thought, "Have I here one of those mind pictures that are without motion?" As if in reply, one of the young ladies gracefully waltzed about the room. She returned to the group and immobility, with a smile lighting her pretty face, which was turned over her shoulder toward me. The entire color scheme was unobtrusive despite the kaleidoscopic sparkles of the chandelier, the exquisite blues and creamy pinks of the rich settings and costumes. I felt that only my interest in dreams brought my notice to the tints - delicate, yet all alive as if with inner illumination. 10

Hypnagogic Imagery Technique

1. Relax completely

While lying in bed, gently close your eyes and relax your head, neck, back, arms, and legs. Completely let go of all muscular and mental tension, and breathe slowly and restfully. Enjoy the feeling of relaxation and let go of your thoughts, worries, and concerns. If you have just awakened from sleep, you are probably sufficiently relaxed.

Otherwise, you may use either the progressive relaxation exercise (page 33) or the 61-point relaxation exercise (page 34) to relax more deeply. Let everything wind down,

slower and slower, more and more relaxed, until your mind becomes as serene as the calmest sea.

2. Observe the visual images

Gently focus your attention on the visual images that will gradually appear before your mind's eye. Watch how the images begin and end. Try to observe the images as delicately as possible, allowing them to be passively reflected in your mind as they unfold. Do not attempt to hold onto the images, but instead just watch without attachment or desire for action. While doing this, try to take the perspective of a detached observer as much as possible. At first you will see a sequence of disconnected, fleeting patterns and images. The images will gradually develop into scenes that become more and more complex, finally joining into extended sequences.

3. Enter the dream

When the imagery becomes a moving, vivid scenario, you should allow yourself to be passively drawn into the dream world. Do not try to actively enter the dream scene,

but instead continue to take a detached interest in the imagery. Let your involvement with what is happening draw you into the dream. But be careful of too much involvement and too little attention. Don't forget that you are dreaming now!

Commentary

Probably the most difficult part of this technique to master is entering the dream at Step 3. The challenge is to develop a delicate vigilance, an unobtrusive observer perspective, from which you let yourself be drawn into the dream. As Paul Tholey has emphasized, "It is not desirable to want actively to enter into the scenery,

since such an intention as a rule causes the scenery to disappear." 11 A passive volition similar to that described in the section on autosuggestion in the previous chapter is required: in Tholey's words, "Instead of actively wanting to enter into the scenery, the subject should attempt to let himself be carried into it passively." 12 A Tibetan teacher advises a similar frame of mind: "While delicately observing the mind, lead it gently into the dream state, as though you were leading a child by the hand." 13

Another risk is that, once you have entered into the dream, the world can seem so realistic that it is easy to lose lucidity, as happened in the beginning of Rapport's WILD described above. As insurance in case this happens, Tholey recommends that you resolve to carry out a particular action in the dream, so that if you momentarily lose lucidity, you may remember your intention to carry out the action and thereby regain lucidity.
~ Stephen LaBerge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming,

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1:I have never been awake before. ~ Stephen LaBerge, Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life,

2:Lucid dreaming lets you make use of the dream state that comes to you every night to have a stimulating reality. ~ Stephen LaBerge,

3:The consciousness of lucid dreaming is a cultural evolution. It's something that we are talking about and learning about, not biological evolution. ~ Stephen LaBerge,

4:A cold, calculating nightmare. Sharp as a finely honed blade. 'The Lucid Dreaming' cuts, separating the flesh before you even know you've been injured. It makes you bleed as a reader. ~ Del Howison,

5:Lucid dreaming has considerable potential for promoting personal growth and self-development, enhancing self-confidence, improving mental and physical health, facilitating creative problem solving and helping you to progress on the path to self-mastery. ~ Stephen LaBerge,

6:As far as the dreams go, really I would only point to there are times in my life where I experienced lucid dreaming, which is a big feature of Inception - the idea of realizing you're in a dream and therefore trying to change or manipulate it in some way. That's a very striking experience for people who have it. ~ Christopher Nolan,

7:There is only one essential difference between consciousness and dreaming, and that is sensory input. Your experience is a dream, so is my experience. This stuff about how the frontal cortext is repressed during dreaming. Lucid dreaming presents an obvious contradiction to it. The only difference is sensory input. ~ Stephen LaBerge,

8:Question 2: How Do You Want to Grow? When you watch how young children soak up information, you realize how deeply wired we are to learn and grow. Personal growth can and should happen throughout life, not just when we’re children. In this section, you’re essentially asking yourself: In order to have the experiences above, how do I have to grow? What sort of man or woman do I need to evolve into? Notice how this question ties to the previous one? Now, consider these four categories from the Twelve Areas of Balance: 5.YOUR HEALTH AND FITNESS. Describe how you want to feel and look every day. What about five, ten, or twenty years from now? What eating and fitness systems would you like to have? What health or fitness systems would you like to explore, not because you think you ought to but because you’re curious and want to? Are there fitness goals you’d like to achieve purely for the thrill of knowing you accomplished them (whether it’s hiking a mountain, learning to tap dance, or getting in a routine of going to the gym)? 6.YOUR INTELLECTUAL LIFE. What do you need to learn in order to have the experiences you listed above? What would you love to learn? What books and movies would stretch your mind and tastes? What kinds of art, music, or theater would you like to know more about? Are there languages you want to master? Remember to focus on end goals—choosing learning opportunities where the joy is in the learning itself, and the learning is not merely a means to an end, such as a diploma. 7.YOUR SKILLS. What skills would help you thrive at your job and would you enjoy mastering? If you’d love to switch gears professionally, what skills would it take to do that? What are some skills you want to learn just for fun? What would make you happy and proud to know how to do? If you could go back to school to learn anything you wanted just for the joy of it, what would that be? 8.YOUR SPIRITUAL LIFE. Where are you now spiritually, and where would you like to be? Would you like to move deeper into the spiritual practice you already have or try out others? What is your highest aspiration for your spiritual practice? Would you like to learn things like lucid dreaming, deep states of meditation, or ways to overcome fear, worry, or stress? ~ Vishen Lakhiani,

9:Wake-Initiated Lucid Dreams (WILDS)
In the last chapter we talked about strategies for inducing lucid dreams by carrying an idea from the waking world into the dream, such as an intention to comprehend the dream state, a habit of critical state testing, or the recognition of a dreamsign. These strategies are intended to stimulate a dreamer to become lucid within a dream.
This chapter presents a completely different set of approaches to the world of lucid dreaming based on the idea of falling asleep consciously. This involves retaining consciousness while wakefulness is lost and allows direct entry into the lucid dream state without any loss of reflective consciousness. The basic idea has many variations.
While falling asleep, you can focus on hypnagogic (sleep onset) imagery, deliberate visualizations, your breath or heartbeat, the sensations in your body, your sense of self, and so on. If you keep the mind sufficiently active while the tendency to enter REM sleep is strong, you feel your body fall asleep, but you, that is to say, your consciousness, remains awake. The next thing you know, you will find yourself in the dream world, fully lucid.
These two different strategies for inducing lucidity result in two distinct types of lucid dreams. Experiences in which people consciously enter dreaming sleep are referred to as wake-initiated lucid dreams (WILDs), in contrast to dream-initiated lucid dreams (DILDs), in which people become lucid after having fallen asleep unconsciously. 1 The two kinds of lucid dreams differ in a number of ways. WILDs always happen in association with brief awakenings (sometimes only one or two seconds long) from and immediate return to REM sleep. The sleeper has a subjective impression of having been awake. This is not true of DILDs. Although both kinds of lucid dream are more likely to occur later in the night, the proportion of WILDs also increases with time of night. In other words, WILDs are most likely to occur the late morning hours or in afternoon naps. This is strikingly evident in my own record of lucid dreams. Of thirty-three lucid dreams from the first REM period of the night, only one (3 percent) was a WILD, compared with thirteen out of thirty-two (41 percent) lucid dreams from afternoon naps. 2 Generally speaking, WILDs are less frequent than DILDs; in a laboratory study of seventy-six lucid dreams, 72 percent were DILDs compared with 28 percent WILDs. 3 The proportion of WILDs observed in the laboratory seems, by my experience, to be considerably higher than the proportion of WILDs reported at home.
To take a specific example, WILDs account for only 5 percent of my home record of lucid dreams, but for 40 percent of my first fifteen lucid dreams in the laboratory. 4 Ibelieve there are two reasons for this highly significant difference: whenever I spentthe night in the sleep laboratory, I was highly conscious of every time I awakened andI made extraordinary efforts not to move more than necessary in order to minimizeinterference with the physiological recordings.
Thus, my awakenings from REM in the lab were more likely to lead toconscious returns to REM than awakenings at home when I was sleeping with neitherheightened consciousness of my environment and self nor any particular intent not tomove. This suggests that WILD induction techniques might be highly effective underthe proper conditions.
Paul Tholey notes that, while techniques for direct entry to the dream staterequire considerable practice in the beginning, they offer correspondingly greatrewards. 5 When mastered, these techniques (like MILD) can confer the capacity toinduce lucid dreams virtually at will. ~ Stephen LaBerge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, 4 - Falling Asleep Consciously,

10:Attention on Hypnagogic Imagery The most common strategy for inducing WILDs is to fall asleep while focusing on the hypnagogic imagery that accompanies sleep onset. Initially, you are likely to see relatively simple images, flashes of light, geometric patterns, and the like.

Gradually more complicated forms appear: faces, people, and finally entire scenes. 6

The following account of what the Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky called “half-dream states” provides a vivid example of what hypnagogic imagery can be like:

I am falling asleep. Golden dots, sparks and tiny stars appear and disappear before my eyes. These sparks and stars gradually merge into a golden net with diagonal meshes which moves slowly and regularly in rhythm with the beating of my heart, which I feel quite distinctly. The next moment the golden net is transformed into rows of brass helmets belonging to Roman soldiers marching along the street below. I hear their measured tread and watch them from the window of a high house in Galata, in Constantinople, in a narrow lane, one end of which leads to the old wharf and the Golden Horn with its ships and steamers and the minarets of Stamboul behind them. I hear their heavy measured tread, and see the sun shining on their helmets. Then suddenly I detach myself from the window sill on which I am lying, and in the same reclining position fly slowly over the lane, over the houses, and then over the Golden Horn in the direction of Stamboul. I smell the sea, feel the wind, the warm sun. This flying gives me a wonderfully pleasant sensation, and I cannot help opening my eyes. 7

Ouspensky’s half-dream states developed out of a habit of observing the contents of his mind while falling asleep or in half-sleep after awakening from a dream. He notes that they were much easier to observe in the morning after awakening than before sleep at the beginning of the night and did not occur at all “without definite efforts.” 8

Dr. Nathan Rapport, an American psychiatrist, cultivated an approach to lucid dreaming very similar to Ouspensky’s: “While in bed awaiting sleep, the experimenter interrupts his thoughts every few minutes with an effort to recall the mental item vanishing before each intrusion that inquisitive attention.” 9 This habit is continued sleep itself, with results like the following:

Brilliant lights flashed, and a myriad of sparkles twinkled from a magnificent cut glass chandelier. Interesting as any stage extravaganza were the many quaintly detailed figurines upon a mantel against the distant, paneled wall adorned in rococo.

At the right a merry group of beauties and gallants in the most elegant attire of Victorian England idled away a pleasant occasion. This scene continued for [a] period of I was not aware, before I discovered that it was not reality, but a mental picture and that I was viewing it. Instantly it became an incommunicably beautiful vision. It was with the greatest stealth that my vaguely awakened mind began to peep: for I knew that these glorious shows end abruptly because of such intrusions.

I thought, “Have I here one of those mind pictures that are without motion?” As if in reply, one of the young ladies gracefully waltzed about the room. She returned to the group and immobility, with a smile lighting her pretty face, which was turned over her shoulder toward me. The entire color scheme was unobtrusive despite the kaleidoscopic sparkles of the chandelier, the exquisite blues and creamy pinks of the rich settings and costumes. I felt that only my interest in dreams brought my notice to the tints – delicate, yet all alive as if with inner illumination. 10

Hypnagogic Imagery Technique

1. Relax completely

While lying in bed, gently close your eyes and relax your head, neck, back, arms, and legs. Completely let go of all muscular and mental tension, and breathe slowly and restfully. Enjoy the feeling of relaxation and let go of your thoughts, worries, and concerns. If you have just awakened from sleep, you are probably sufficiently relaxed.

Otherwise, you may use either the progressive relaxation exercise (page 33) or the 61-point relaxation exercise (page 34) to relax more deeply. Let everything wind down,

slower and slower, more and more relaxed, until your mind becomes as serene as the calmest sea.

2. Observe the visual images

Gently focus your attention on the visual images that will gradually appear before your mind’s eye. Watch how the images begin and end. Try to observe the images as delicately as possible, allowing them to be passively reflected in your mind as they unfold. Do not attempt to hold onto the images, but instead just watch without attachment or desire for action. While doing this, try to take the perspective of a detached observer as much as possible. At first you will see a sequence of disconnected, fleeting patterns and images. The images will gradually develop into scenes that become more and more complex, finally joining into extended sequences.

3. Enter the dream

When the imagery becomes a moving, vivid scenario, you should allow yourself to be passively drawn into the dream world. Do not try to actively enter the dream scene,

but instead continue to take a detached interest in the imagery. Let your involvement with what is happening draw you into the dream. But be careful of too much involvement and too little attention. Don’t forget that you are dreaming now!

Commentary

Probably the most difficult part of this technique to master is entering the dream at Step 3. The challenge is to develop a delicate vigilance, an unobtrusive observer perspective, from which you let yourself be drawn into the dream. As Paul Tholey has emphasized, “It is not desirable to want actively to enter into the scenery,

since such an intention as a rule causes the scenery to disappear.” 11 A passive volition similar to that described in the section on autosuggestion in the previous chapter is required: in Tholey’s words, “Instead of actively wanting to enter into the scenery, the subject should attempt to let himself be carried into it passively.” 12 A Tibetan teacher advises a similar frame of mind: “While delicately observing the mind, lead it gently into the dream state, as though you were leading a child by the hand.” 13

Another risk is that, once you have entered into the dream, the world can seem so realistic that it is easy to lose lucidity, as happened in the beginning of Rapport’s WILD described above. As insurance in case this happens, Tholey recommends that you resolve to carry out a particular action in the dream, so that if you momentarily lose lucidity, you may remember your intention to carry out the action and thereby regain lucidity.
~ Stephen LaBerge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming,

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