Below, the author presents the most interesting excerpts from his lucid dreaming travel log: it happened to him for the first time in the fall of 1999, when he was a senior in high school. One of the interesting things about these excerpts is that they describe the development of a personal practice from the teenage years through the present day.

It’s worth noting that my many years of experience and thousands of lucid dreams logged have had a strong effect on the practical side of my practice. I long ago realized those desires and wants that everyone has, and at that – many times over. Nowadays, I mostly do technical experiments, research, and hone my skills, all while obtaining elementary satisfaction from the practice itself and the vividness of sensation in it. That’s why even the most recent excerpts from my log are not characteristic of lucid dreaming as it is usually practiced. They are merely the most illustrative examples. An unprepared audience would simply not understand ordinary lucid dreams.

As with the previous section, the reader is encouraged to exercise his theoretical knowledge by undertaking an independent and critical analysis of the experiences described.

Each time you wake up again, try not to move or open your eyes. Instead, immediately try to separate from your body. Up to 50% of success with indirect techniques comes during this simple first step – one that is so simple that people don’t even suspect that it could work.

In order to separate from your body, simply try to stand up, roll out, or levitate. Try to do it with your own perceived (i.e. subtle) body, but without moving your physical muscles. Remember that it will feel just like normal physical movement. When the moment comes, don’t think too hard about how to do it. During those first moments after awakening, stubbornly try to separate from your body any way that you can and no matter what. Most likely, you’ll intuitively know how to do it. The most important thing is not to think too hard and not to lose those first seconds of awakening.

Interesting Fact!

During the second lesson at School of Out-of-Body Travel seminars, participants are asked to explain in their own words how they were able to separate, but without using the words “easily”, “simply”, or “as usual”. They are usually always unable to comply with this request, as separation nearly always occurs for them “easily”, “simply” and “as usual” when the moment is right.

lucid dreaming maintenance or “maintaining” refers to techniques that allow a practitioner to remain in lucid dreaming for the maximum amount of time possible. Without knowledge of “maintaining” techniques, the duration of lucid dreaming will be several times shorter than it could otherwise be. The shortest lucid dreams last just a few seconds. Beginning practitioners usually fear not being able to exit a lucid dream; this shouldn’t ever be a concern because the real challenge is being able to maintain lucid dreaming state, which is easily lost unless lucid dreaming maintenance techniques are used.

lucid dreaming maintenance consists of three primary principles: resisting a return to the wakeful state (known as a foul), resisting falling asleep, and resisting a false exit from lucid dreaming.

Resistance to returning to the body is self-explanatory, whereas resistance to falling asleep is unclear to many. Not everyone knows that almost half of lucid dreaming experiences usually end in a quite trivial way – falling asleep. A person usually loses attentiveness, his or her awareness dissipates, and everything around gradually loses clarity and turns into what is for all intents and purposes a usual dream.

Resisting a false exit from lucid dreaming (false awakenings) is a lot more surprising and dramatic. Sometimes a practitioner detects an impending exit from lucid dreaming and subsequent deepening techniques fail to work, resulting in what seems to be a return to the body and physical reality. Sure that lucid dreaming has ended, a practitioner may stand up and then fall asleep after perceiving a few steps. In such cases, falling asleep most often happens without any movement, but while still lying in bed. The problem is that the difference between lucid dreaming and reality can be so subtle that in terms of internal or external indicators, lucid dreaming practically can’t be distinguished from reality. Therefore, one must know the necessary actions to take in the event that lucid dreaming ceases, since the end of a lucid dream could actually be a trick and purely imagined.

There are specific solutions for the three problems described in addition to general rules that apply to any lucid dreaming experience. Studying these rules should be given just as high a priority as studying the specific solutions, since only some of them, when applied separately, may help one to remain in lucid dreaming several times longer than usual.

In some cases, techniques for maintaining are not applicable. However, knowledge of how to maintain is useful for the majority of experiences. Also, there might be situations when someone need only resist a foul, while someone else may need to resist falling asleep. All of this is very specific to each case and can be determined only in practice.

With perfect knowledge of all the techniques for maintaining, a lucid dream may last two to four minutes, which doesn’t sound like an extended duration, but really is. A particularity of lucid dreaming space is that achieving something and moving around in it takes a minimum amount of time, mere seconds. Thus, so much can be done during 3 minutes in lucid dreaming that one literally needs a list, so as not to waste any time.

There are theories that have neither been proven nor disproven claiming that time in lucid dreaming contracts and expands relative to real time. Thus, one minute of real time while in lucid dreaming may feel much longer in terms of lucid dreaming time.

Perception of time varies from practitioner to practitioner. Novices especially perceive a real minute as more like 5 to 10 minutes in lucid dreaming. This is determined by the particularities of individual psychology, state of mind, and the type of events that occur in lucid dreaming.

In order to understand how long a lucid dream really lasted, one does not need to try using a stopwatch in the real world. It is better to count how many actions took place in it and how much time each of them could have taken. The result will differ from one’s first rough estimate several times over.

The maximum duration of lucid dreaming depends heavily on the ability to apply lucid dreaming maintenance techniques. Some practitioners have difficulty breaking the two-minute barrier while some find it easy to remain in lucid dreaming for 10 minutes or longer. It is physically impossible to remain in lucid dreaming forever because even a 20-minute lucid dreaming is unheard of.

Minneapolis, USA

I had a regular separation, but no vision. I felt around, but the furniture I felt wasn’t my furniture. I thought it would be cool to be in a mountain cabin, and when I gained vision I was in an unfamiliar mountain cabin. Again, I was alone.

It was completely real again, like my last experience. I was so excited I started running around (after doing deepening). I ran around the house exploring for a while until I was out breath (M.R.: no plan of action). Then, I was afraid that all the heavy breathing would wake me up.

This time, the thought of having a real body instantly made lucid dreaming experience weaken, so much so that I was afraid I would fall asleep. I began to deepen.

Then I saw a jug of a drink in the kitchen and told myself it would help me deepen.

It was the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. I’ve eaten and drunk in lucid dreaming before, and it always tasted like whatever I thought it would. I didn’t have any expectations, only that of deepening. It was like a sweet carbonated drink, only without any bite. It was truly indescribable.

Strangely, the drink did deepen me back to complete realism, and I was so excited that I ran around exploring again. Then, once again, I became afraid of waking. This time, that thought brought me back to bed.

I attempted to separate, but then my wife called for me and so I got right up. After a few moments I realized that I was still in lucid dreaming. I actually only got up in lucid dreaming, but it took me a few moments to realize this. I was back in my house.

After some time in my house, I awoke in my bed for real, but quickly re-entered lucid dreaming into my house once more.

I was going to do a fourth reentry, but my real wife shook my arm during separation to get me up for the day, because it was well past the time I normally get up.

I’m not sure how long I had slept for before I entered lucid dreaming the first time. I do remember having a very vivid normal dream during that time. I may have also fallen asleep between lucid dreaming experiences, but I still remember them being so real that I doubt it.

I got up for the day 1.5 hours after first waking up for the deferred method (lucid dreaming likely happened just in the last few minutes).

The Art of Dreaming (1993)

…It seemed at that time that every breakthrough in dreaming happened to me suddenly, without warning. The presence of inorganic beings in my dreams was no exception. It happened while I was dreaming about a circus I knew in my childhood. The setting looked like a town in the mountains in Arizona. I began to watch people with the vague hope I always had that I would see again the people I had seen the first time don Juan made me enter into the second attention. As I watched them, I felt a sizable jolt of nervousness in the pit of my stomach; it was like a punch.

The jolt distracted me, and I lost sight of the people, the circus, and the mountain town in Arizona. In their place stood two strange-looking figures. They were thin, less than a foot wide, but long, perhaps seven feet. They were looming over me like two gigantic earthworms. I knew that it was a dream, but I also knew that I was seeing. Don Juan had discussed seeing in my normal awareness and in the second attention as well. Although I was incapable of experiencing it myself, I thought I had understood the idea of directly perceiving energy. In that dream, looking at those two strange apparitions, I realized that I was seeing the energy essence of something unbelievable.

I remained very calm. I did not move. The most remarkable thing to me was that they didn’t dissolve or change into something else. They were cohesive beings that retained their candlelike shape. Something in them was forcing something in me to hold the view of their shape. I knew it because something was telling me that if I did not move, they would not move either.

It all came to an end, at a given moment, when I woke up with a fright. I was immediately besieged by fears. A deep preoccupation took hold of me. It was not psychological worry but rather a bodily sense of anguish, sadness with no apparent foundation.

The two strange shapes appeared to me from then on in every one of my dreaming sessions.

Eventually, it was as if I dreamt only to encounter them. They never attempted to move toward me or to interfere with me in any way. They just stood there, immobile, in front of me, for as long as my dream lasted…