Vancouver, Canada

Deferred method. About 7 am. Ears plugged, wearing a mask. Trying to do the techniques: phantom wiggling, observing images, listening in. Nothing is working. I feel too awake but I am still trying and alternating each technique with forced falling asleep.

At certain point I realize that I am still in my bed watching TV. I have a TV set in my bedroom but not this one and at a different spot. The TV that I see is my old one and now is at my mom’s house.

As soon as I see this I realize that I am in lucid dreaming. I am looking at the screen and thinking about my plan (M.R.: no deepening). Now, one of the items on my ‘lucid dreaming to-do list’ is to find out what happened to my dad who disappeared a long time ago and I don’t even know if he is alive or not. So on TV I see a person walking away. The person looks like one of the singers my dad liked very much and also resembled a lot. So I start calling him, dad, dad. The person on the screen turns his head and start transforming into my father and I feel the sensation of being pulled into this picture. In a second he and I are standing in front of each other in the middle of my bedroom. He is wearing a cap and a light colored jacket with a yellow sweater sticking out of the jacket. Later I asked my mom if he ever wore anything like that. She said no, however she mentioned that this description matched more my dad’s brother, my uncle, who I never met. So I am hugging my dad and telling him that I am so happy to see him and starting to explain that I learned to leave my body. No dialog, however, took place. He was there but that was it, he wasn’t responding, wasn’t doing anything and finally he disappeared.

Then I remember looking at myself in the mirror, there was me exactly as I was at that time in reality, in a t-shirt and pajama pants.

I remembered that I need to do deepening techniques, but first I decided to find a pen and notepad and write everything down, right there in lucid dreaming, so I won’t forget. I found a notepad (I have it in reality) and a thick red pen (don’t have it in reality). Now, because I was wearing a sleep-mask, in lucid dreaming I sometimes had normal vision, and sometimes my sight was blocked by the mask. So as soon as I was all set to write everything down, I realized that my sleep-mask was blocking my vision. I started to pull it off my face thinking that I should not open my eyes because I might wake up… and bingo, I woke up (M.R.: no re-entering).

Questions

Which alternative states are included in the term “lucid dreaming”?

How does lucid dreaming differ from out-of-body travel?

Is the perception of reality different in waking life than in lucid dreaming world?

Does lucid dreaming have applications for day-to-day life?

What skills must be learned before proceeding to practical use of lucid dreaming?

How many types of autonomous lucid dreaming entrance techniques are there?

What is the difference between direct and indirect techniques?

Which techniques are easiest for the majority of practitioners?

Is it worth trusting various devices and programs that promise to be able to help one enter lucid dreaming state? Why or why not?

Should one eat meat when practicing lucid dreaming?

Tasks

Try to remember if you have experienced lucid dreaming encounters in the past.

If you have encountered lucid dreaming, what type of technique gained entrance; direct, indirect, or conscious dreaming?

If possible, ask some friends and acquaintances about the subject of out-of-body travel or conscious dreaming. Do any of them remember a similar experience? What was it like?

Testing Individual Effectiveness. Immediately after waking from sleep, remain motionless, eyes closed. Imagine the physical body is rotating along an axis for 5 to 10 seconds. If no unusual sensations occur, try another technique. If vibrations occur during rotation or the movement suddenly feels realistic, then continue the rotation technique as long as there is progress in the sensation’s development. There are several possible outcomes when rotation is practiced. The imagined rotation is replaced by a very real sensation of rotating along an imagined axis. When this occurs, a practitioner may easily leave the body. The other outcome is the sudden presence of strong vibrations or loud sounds, amid which separation from the body is possible. During rotation, separation has been known to spontaneously occur and the practitioner enters lucid dreaming.

Training. To practice rotation, imagine revolving around the head-to-foot axis for several minutes while lying down, eyes closed. It is not necessary to focus on the visual effects of rotation or minute sensations in the body. The key factor is the vestibular sensation that arises from internal rotation. As a rule, many practitioners experience difficulty performing full rotation. One person may be limited to 90 degrees of movement where another experiences 180 degrees. With consistent, correct practice, full 360 degree rotation will occur.

Several dozen secondary and mixed techniques are presented in a separate section at the end of the textbook (Chapter 12).

Antwerp, Belgium

I don’t know what woke me up, but I knew right away that something was out of order. I could not open my eyes, and my body was almost just asking to rise up. I understood what was going on – all of this indicated that I was having an out-of-body experience. The first thing I tried was to lift my left hand up, and it worked. I understood that this was an astral hand, because I could see through it. I moved hastily and carefully to the other side of the bed (There was a strange sensation in my head at that time). I calmed down and tried to do something again. I levitated about half a meter above the bed. Vision came back to me right then and I saw what appeared to be my room, but not exactly it, as the rug on the floor was of a different color pattern and the door was closed for some reason (M.R.: no deepening and no plan of action).

I could not comprehend why everything was lit from behind my back. Then, I looked over my left shoulder and saw a small bright white ball behind my shoulder blade at a distance of 8 inches. It was lighting up the room up. Then I tried to go through the door, but was unable to (M.R.: no maintaining). Out of the fear that I would never return to my real body (M.R.: wrong logic), I woke up in the everyday world (M.R.: no re-entering).

Cell-phone technique

lucid dreamingr tries to feel some object lying in his hand, e.g. a cell-phone, an apple, a TV remote control, etc. Meanwhile, one should try to achieve realistic sensations in full detail.

Technique of imagined sensation

lucid dreamingr tries to feel tactile sensations on his body, starting with the sensation that someone or something is lying on him, and ending with the feeling of touching someone or something.

Straining the brain technique

lucid dreamingr tries to strain his brain either spasmodically or continually, as if it were a muscle. This brings a feeling of real strain inside the cranium, in addition to pressure, noise, and vibrations. This is essentially a technique of creating and intensifying the vibrations that enable lucid dreaming entrance.

Technique of straining the body but not the muscles

Like straining the brain, but with the whole body. One tries to strain the body, but not the physical muscles. This causes internal tension, noise, and vibrations, which can eventually lead to lucid dreaming.

Technique of bodily perception

lucid dreamingr tries to authentically feel that his body is being stretched apart, compressed, inflated, deflated, twisted or otherwise distorted in some way.