Moscow, Russia

Returning from a night out, we wandered into a shop called "The Magic Stone". We bought a druse piece (small crystals encrusted on the surface of a rock or mineral, in our case, amethysts). According to my girlfriend, the rock helps one to "tune in to one’s dreams". To that end, one simply needed to put the piece on the headstand of one’s bed, and just go to sleep. That’s just what we did. We had to get up really early the next morning (at about 5 am) in order to make it for an excursion. As it were, we didn’t have time to waste, but I nevertheless made an attempt to "tune in" to my dreams. I feel asleep at some point, but continued on to dream that I was lying on the bed and trying to tune-in for an exit from the body. At that very moment, I felt a light tingling in my back, a kind of life energy. I even tried to facilitate the sensation, thinking, "great, it’s coming, so act!". It intensified, and now felt like waves going up and down my spine (M.R.: no separation). A characteristic sensation, long forgotten, went through my body. The sensation could not be considered pleasurable in any way, and that’s when I thought to myself, "now I remember why I had stopped intentionally trying to enter lucid dreaming." However, it was already too late to turn back. At some moment I was lifted up, barely having time to look back at the couch.

I soon found myself in a spacious room (M.R.: no deepening). It was so large that the only thing that I could see clearly was the wall next to me. There were also some people in the room. They all wanted something from me and kept coming up to me with stupid pretexts. I kept telling them to "buzz off", and tried to drive them away. I had only one thought in my head: "I’ve got to find my girlfriend". I tried as hard as I could to remember where we had fallen asleep, but my memory kept failing me. Different characters constantly distracted me the whole time, one of them was especially persistent. At one point, he even insisted that I help him to open his bottle of wine with a corkscrew. I decided to help him, and once I had opened the bottle, I thought: "Why not? I’ve never tried out wine in lucid dreaming," and put the bottle right to my lips. The wine tasted really funny, more like watered-down blackberry jam with pieces of fruit floating around. The unfinished bottle somehow was no longer in my hands, and I continued trying to get out of that room.

The only thing I could find to deepen with was the wall of a strange construction made of wooden planks. It was whitewashed with what seemed to be an oil-based paint (more than anything else, it reminded me of an outhouse). I was about to poke my head in when an assertive type warned that, "… it’s a portal from which uninvited guests are able to crash in…" Not eager myself to climb in there, I contented myself with taking off a small dark mirror from the outer wall. I played around a bit with my reflection (which did not always want to follow when I moved my head), but those characters milling about stuck to me like glue. I then decided to have some fun, and began looking into the mirror together with those companions, in pair with one at a time. However, their reflection was quite different from their outward appearance. I got quickly bored with this game, and told everybody to go away again.

I finally decided to get out of that building, concentrating on where the place at which we were sleeping might be. I abruptly opened a door, but was disappointed. There was an unfamiliar outdoor scene on the other side. It seemed to be just before dawn outside, the darkest hour. Single cars went down the street. I began to peer at the cars parked at the curb. They had quite a funny-looking appearance. Suddenly, a car swerved off the street and towards me. It drove up to me, and I could see an interesting-looking woman sitting behind the wheel. She was wearing mostly green. We talked, and I couldn’t get past the idea that she was speaking "bookishly", as if quoting the lines from a character in 19th century literature. I told her, "Now you’re saying all that and so on…" She looked at me, and I noticed her strange eyes. She had green ladybugs instead of ordinary pupils. I realized that I was beginning to return to reality (M.R.: no maintaining).

I woke up (M.R.: no re-entering). I realized that I was lying on my back with my arms at my sides, and holding my girlfriend’s hand in mine. She suddenly woke up too, and began to relate her experience…

Hidalgo, México

After waking up around 8:00 am (on a holiday, of course), I had breakfast and went back to sleep. Then, after having an extremely weird dream, I managed to awaken without movement. I immediately tried to separate by rolling, and failed. Then I tried forced falling asleep (FFA) followed by phantom wiggling, but this time I tried to move my legs slowly and feel the movement. Suddenly, I noticed that I was already standing next to my bed, but with my blanket still over my body. After taking it off, I started to deepen in lucid dreaming, touching and peering at everything, and immediately after feeling myself in a hyper-realistic environment, I started to explore my own house (M.R.: no plan of action).

The time was changing constantly between day and night, and in the next room I found my uncle, watching TV. I was so excited about lucid dreaming and so curious that I tried to explain to him that everything was non-physical, just to watch his reactions. He said I was crazy, ignored me and continued watching the TV. Then I threw the TV. through the window and continued to the next room.

Suddenly, I came back to my body (M.R.: no maintaining) and started the separation again. I separated again in my room. This time, it was night. I started to call a woman I was looking for by name, but I started to have problems with my voice, so I decided to trans-locate to my school. I closed my eyes, and imagined the place. Suddenly I started to feel a sensation of flight, and after opening my eyes I was already there. The place was pretty different than in reality, but I enjoyed it a lot more than if it were as usual. I spent a lot of in-lucid dreaming time looking for that woman, asking people, calling her name, with no results.

In the end, I lost consciousness and fell into a normal dream. Anyways, it was a wonderful experience.

I was waking up and felt a strange feeling in my hands and feet. I also noticed I was sleeping in the baby’s bed but, like most dreams, did not think anything of it. Meanwhile, I felt the presence of someone standing by my bed. It was a strange feeling and the presence that made me question lucidity, so I stuck my hand through the wall, and BAM! I was now lucid.

So I grabbed my 7 year old son, put him on my shoulders and told him we were going flying. I jumped up but nothing. So I decided to walk through the wall. As I did so, everything went black and I knew I was losing lucid dreaming. I rubbed my hands together and waited patiently for lucid dreaming to return. To my surprise, it did! I’ve been able to recover lucid dreams before, but none after losing them as long as I had here. So this time I decided to not do anything until I was able to make lucid dreaming more stable. I rubbed my hands some more and everything became so vivid! I still had my son on my shoulders, and decided to just jump through the wall and I gently floated down to the street – man, what a rush! I then took another huge leap and slowly floated down again (M.R.: no plan of action). Everything faded and I did not feel any hands that I could rub together, and so it ended (M.R.: no maintaining).

I’ve heard of people lying still after lucid dreams and being able to re-enter lucid dreaming, but I was not able to do it.

Right after dinner, I decided to enter lucid dreaming using the direct method. To that end, I started implementing the dotting technique (concentrating my attention on different parts of the body). However, I encountered difficulties during relaxation: I could not stop my mind from getting distracted with other thoughts. Only with great difficulty was I able to concentrate on the task. I kept to relaxation. Then, I once again employed dotting for about 20 minutes, but nothing worked. However, weak vibrations arose from time to time. Meanwhile, I became more and more sleepy. At one point my conscious awareness checked out, but then quickly came back (this didn’t seem to last more than a minute, which was confirmed by my alarm-clock upon returning to the body) under the influence of my preliminary intention not to fall asleep. I then began to feel alert and was enveloped by vibrations, which occurred on their own in amid the transition between physiological states. I was easily able to amplify the vibrations.

Then I rolled out. However, the vibrations began to die down, and I was returned back to my body. I tried to separate again by climbing out. I was able to do this despite great difficulty. I was now suspended in an indeterminate space of vague sensation. While separating, I felt a strong feeling of discomfort that nearly persuaded me to cut the attempt short. However, I knew that that this sometimes happens and always occurs before plunging into a more stable lucid dreaming. In order to deepen this lucid dreaming, I decided to employ levitation.

It succeeded, and I derived real pleasure from this process. For some reason, the levitation did not lead me into the deepest lucid dreaming, and so I began to fall head-first in order to further deepen it.

The movement and deepening brought a feeling of slight uneasiness that bordered on fear, but I was able to keep it under control from the outset. I soon realized that I was in the deepest state that I had ever been in. This increased my anxiety. For the sake of experiment, I kept going deeper and deeper. I began to have thoughts about the impossibility of returning to the body from such depths. My vision faded in and out, because I was made uncomfortable only by my feelings, and not by what I could see around. Once my vision came to me, what I saw cannot be described in words. That’s how uncommon, indescribable, and realistic it was. It was as if I were seeing with some other organ of sight, one far more advanced than the human eye. I couldn’t feel my body (neither my real or phantom one).

For the first time in my life, I physically felt my thoughts: when I started thinking about something, I begin to automatically move through space. Meanwhile, I could clearly tell that my thoughts were causing this movement. My brains were somehow being wracked by thought. (this was the first time I had ever had this experience, and so I can’t say how realistic it was, or if it could actually be experienced in a normal state. Nonetheless, the sensation was quite realistic). Realizing how deep I was in lucid dreaming, I decided to get out of there, as I was afraid for my life. As it is easy to suppose, this was, to put it lightly, not easy. I began to feel fear. I was completely unable to enter my body or get control of it. Once was finally able to feel it, it felt like someone else’s. Contrary to my expectations, even concentrating on my big toe did not help. Instead of getting me out of that state, relaxation deepened it. Then, I got completely lost: what normally helped wasn’t working, and there were no other effective methods to employ. After long desperate attempts, I finally managed to enter my body. This only happened thanks to attempts to move any body part I could, in addition to concentrating on breathing.

Many practitioners actively experiment with their bodily form during lucid dreaming, which can take on any appearance thanks to the properties of lucid dreaming space. Such experimentation, despite being somewhat difficult, is quite popular and interesting. Nearly every advanced lucid dreamingr experiments with it sooner or later.

Interesting Fact!

People appear in human form while in lucid dreaming only because they are accustomed to it from everyday life. Actually, you can feel every fine detail while inhabiting any body or any thing, as there is no personal “body” as such in lucid dreaming.

A distinctive trait of experiments with altered physical perception is the unbelievably fine detail of sensation. If a lucid dream practitioner takes on the form of a lizard, he will be able to feel not only his tail, but also that his tongue is now forked. Meanwhile, if a practitioner takes on the form of a wolf, then he will feel the nails on his paws, and experience incredibly heightened sense of smell. The same applies to every possible sense, the true-to-lifeness of which depends on one’s mastery over incarnating in lucid dreaming.

One feels as if new parts of the brain activate that are responsible for the sensory perception of body parts that humans don’t have. Such body parts can then not only be felt, but also controlled. For example, if a practitioner has become a bird in lucid dreaming, then he will not only feel his wings, but also be able to control them as if he had been born with them. Such reorganization of perception is possible for all human sensations and this applies not only to animate objects, but also to inanimate ones: stones, trees, furniture, etc.

Without further ado, here are the techniques for transforming one’s embodiment: