A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics PDF
Preview A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics
A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming Mastering the Art of Oneironautics Dylan Tuccillo, Jared Zeizel, and Thomas Peisel with illustrations by Mahendra Singh WORKMAN PUBLISHING • NEW YORK 1. Starting the Journey 2. Packing Your Bags 3. Arrival 4. Exploring a New World 5. Mastering the Terrain 6. The Next Frontier CONTENTS Foreword Part One 1 A New Discovery 2 What Are Dreams? 3 A History of Dreaming Part Two 4 The REM Stage 5 The Power of Intention 6 Remembering Your Dreams 7 Keeping a Dream Journal 8 The Reality Check Part Three 9 Becoming Lucid 10 Staying Lucid Part Four 11 Transportation 12 Creation 13 The Natives 14 Superpowers Part Five 15 Defusing Nightmares 16 Healing and Wholeness 17 Dream Incubation 18 WILD Part Six 19 Know Thyself 20 Waking vs. Dreaming 21 A Future Vision Notes Acknowledgments About the Authors FOREWORD We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. —T. S. Eliot, poet, playwright, aka “Old Possum” For as long as there have been blank spots on the map, there have been pioneers —those unafraid of the fringe, who relish the untamed, the unknown, and the undiscovered. These individuals are inspired by the adventurous impulse to survey new ground, to chart new territory, or to discover new ideas. They are the innovators, creators, visionaries, and explorers. Today we find ourselves on the brink of yet another frontier. You, holding this book, are about to enter this unknown world. Where are you going? What’s left that hasn’t already been mapped out? The only blank spots left are in the depths of the sea and in the vastness of outer space, but you won’t be going to either of these places. This journey is a tad different. You won’t find this place on any map. You’re not a stranger to this land. In fact you’ve traveled there every night of your life, whether you realize it or not. You leave your familiar world and experience this place, which has its own rules, customs, laws, and native population. You can traverse this frontier just like you’d walk through a forest. Here, you can learn, discover, heal, and awaken to different realities. If you’ve read the cover of this book, you know what we’re getting at: dreams! The goal of this book is to help you explore your dreams using the art of lucid dreaming. We will explain what lucid dreaming is and how you too can use it to survey the ground floor of your own subconscious. We will teach you how to become an oneironaut, a word derived from Greek that means “dream navigator.” Lucid dreaming is the ability to know you’re dreaming while you’re dreaming. A lucid dreamer is able to go to sleep at night and wake up within his or her dream. With this unique awareness, you can generally behave like someone who is awake, exercising the free will, imagination, and memory of waking life. Once lucid, you can explore and even change elements of the dream. If you were to travel down the Amazon River, you’d need a field guide to tell you which plants to eat, how to navigate the terrain, and what to do when dealing with the natives. Consider this book your field guide to the dream world, a map to navigate through your subconscious. If you’re a newcomer to lucid dreaming, the idea of exploring your subconscious may seem crazy or daunting. Don’t you worry, we searched for the best techniques out there, made some improvements, and then boiled them down to their simplest forms. For those of you who have already experienced lucid dreaming, this guide will help you master this ability while traveling beyond what you thought was possible. We’ll teach you: 1. How to reconnect with your dreams 2. How to have a lucid dream 3. What to do once you’re lucid This book is filled with step-by-step advice, stories from the dream world, and wonderfully maddening ideas. It’s based on our own experiences with a decade of lucid dreaming as well as the real-life experiences of many other lucid dreamers, writers, and scientists. Our goal was to report back from the dream world and write about the things that we actually observed and experienced. Unlike other field guides, this book is designed to be read from start to finish, just as if you were to travel down a jungle trail. Information from the first chapter will be used in the second chapter; tips from the second chapter will pop up in the third chapter, and so on. So try and hold off the urge to jump around. Here’s an important note to remember before embarking on this inner journey: While dreaming is a skill that can improve with practice and focus, it’s not something foreign to you. You dream. You do so every single night, whether you remember it or not. Ready to start? Here’s your first lesson. The icon of a compass, seen above, will appear many times throughout this book. TRY THIS: Every time you see a compass, ask yourself the question “Am I dreaming at this very moment?” Look around you and really try to answer this question. It may sound ridiculous to doubt your reality (of course you’re awake, after all, you’re reading this book). But for reasons you will soon learn, this reality check is the first step in waking up in your dreams. If you’re able to master this technique, you’ll have no problem with lucid dreaming. So take a moment now and ask yourself this seemingly bizarre question: “Am I dreaming?” PART ONE Starting the Journey 1 A New Discovery It’s April 12, 1975, in the Department of Psychology at the University of Hull in England. Researcher Keith Hearne is trying desperately to stay awake. He sits alone, monitoring a man named Alan Worsley as he sleeps, watching the monotonous up-and-down charting of ink on his polysomnograph machine. Worsley looks the same as any sleeper does—eyes closed, chest rising and falling. It’s almost 8:00 a.m., and so far there is nothing out of the ordinary about this quiet Saturday morning. But in just a few minutes something incredible will occur. At this very moment, these two scientists are attempting to make a discovery that will change history. They are trying to prove scientifically an esoteric ability that humans have known about for centuries: We can be consciously awake inside our dreams. An obvious obstacle stands in the way of this would-be breakthrough: How can such a strange and ridiculous claim be proven? Worsley has experienced plenty of lucid dreams before. It won’t be hard for him to become conscious inside of his own dream. But how does he prove that he’s lucid? It’s not as if Worsley can bring a camera into the dream world and bring back some Polaroids. To prove such an ability, our researchers will need a way to communicate from the dream world back to the waking world. They need some sort of phone line, a way for Worsley to “call” Hearne and tell him he’s dreaming. Since this feat has never been pulled off by modern science, these two men cannot rely on past experiments to figure out how to do it. They are all alone, navigating the uncharted fringes of science. Luckily, Hearne and Worsley have an idea. In the dream I entered my house at night. I flipped the switch to turn on the kitchen lights. The lights did not come on (a common problem in my dreams). It caused me to ask whether I was dreaming or not, which I knew the answer to immediately. I proceeded into the house now fully aware that I was dreaming. I saw my brother. I remembered that my objective tonight was to interact more with dream characters. —Richard V. W. A few basic scientific facts helped develop their clever theory. You see, while our minds are active during a dream, our physical bodies are turned off. The body is essentially paralyzed when we venture off to the Land of Nod; the motor neurons in our brains are not stimulated, and the body’s muscles are dormant. This is a normal state known as sleep atonia. Fortunately there are two parts of the body that remain unaffected by the paralysis: the diaphragm, so we can keep breathing, and the eyes. Our hotshot scientists came into the lab that day with a hypothesis: If Worsley moved his eyes back and forth inside the dream world, the physical eyes of his sleeping body would echo the same pattern of eye movement. The eyes would be the phone line, a way to communicate between these two worlds. At 8:07 a.m., Worsley finds himself in a dream, aware that he is dreaming and that his physical body is lying unconscious in the waking world. He then carries out specific, agreed-upon eye patterns—left to right eight times—in order to signal to the lab that he is in fact dreaming and doing so consciously. “The signals were coming from another world—the world of dreams,” wrote Hearne, “and they were as exciting as if they were coming from another solar system in space.” The EEG readout confirmed it, charting Worsley’s brain activity: He was physically asleep, yet he was aware enough to signal back to the laboratory. He was lucid dreaming. Three years later, a man named Stephen LaBerge would conduct a similar test at Stanford University. Without any knowledge of Hearne’s experiments, LaBerge completed his doctoral dissertation, trying to prove the same thing: Conscious dreaming was not hogwash, but an actual, provable experience. Using the same eye-signaling technique, he too was successful. More tests were done to confirm the findings, and the news spread. There was now scientific proof of what the ancients had been telling us for centuries. We can be awake in our dreams. I’m in a high-rise apartment building with glass windows. A villain taunts me outside. He’s flying on some sort of skateboard device. Realizing the absurdity of the situation I realize that I’m dreaming. “I’m dreaming!” I think to myself and I jump out of the building wearing nothing but swimming shorts. I fly toward him, trying to catch up. He is much faster than I am, but I’m able to mirror his movements and keep up with him. We chase each other, weaving around and in between buildings. I can read his subtle movements like we’re two birds chasing after each other. I put my head down and fly in a straight line no longer following his lead. I grab ahold of him! Holding the back of his flying device I fling him high into the air. Not sure what happens to him after that. I wake up. —Miguel H. Getting out of bed and standing on my feet, I performed a reality check by looking at my digital watch, looking away, and looking back at it again. As the digital numbers did change, I still wasn’t entirely convinced that it was a dream because everything was so vivid and real. —Ben S. Becoming Aware Before we talk about the fine subtleties of dream adventures, let’s take a step back and ask the obvious question: What exactly is a lucid dream? A lucid dream is one in which you become aware that you’re dreaming. Not to be confused with a very vivid dream, a lucid dream is the present-moment realization that you’re dreaming, a sudden self-reflective epiphany of, “Wait a second . . . I’m dreaming!” You may notice that you’re in a location that would normally be impossible (Wait, how did I get to Hawaii?) or perhaps you stumble upon something absolutely absurd (Is that an ostrich driving a car?). Maybe your trigger has more to do with your past (Wait a second, I’m not in college anymore! This has to be a dream!). Typically, lucid dreams are triggered by some sort of inconsistency, something that suddenly causes the dreamer to stop and question his or her reality. O-NEIR-O-NAUT-ICS Oneironaut is derived from two Greek words, oneira meaning “dreams” and nautis meaning “sailor.” An oneironaut is someone who has learned to travel consciously in the dream world, exploring its terrain with a high degree of clarity and awareness. Once you become lucid, you’ll have complete memory of your waking life, and will be able to think logically, make decisions, and explore the dream’s landscape in the same way you’d traverse the physical world. You’ll have direct influence over the entire dream and its content. Whereas in a regular dream, you would react blindly, unable to reflect on your current situation, you now hold the reins—your mind is awake enough to call the shots. Have a conversation with a dream character, fly across a mountain range, breathe underwater, pass effortlessly through walls—these are just a few examples. No longer confined to a physical body, you have the freedom to travel over large distances, move at incredible speeds, or even transcend time as you know it. When you realize that you are not separate from the inner world of your dreams, you can move, shape, even create objects out of thin air. Everything in the environment around you takes on a very intimate relationship; you might even say that the world around you is you! If it seems like we’re exaggerating, we’re not: The sensations of touch, smell, sight, taste, and sound will seem just as vivid as they do in waking life. If you’ve ever seen the sci-fi film The Matrix, you already have a good idea what this world is like: a place that seems real but is just a projection of the mind. As the character Morpheus describes The Matrix, “If real is what you can feel, smell, taste, and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” But unlike The Matrix, lucid dreaming is not science fiction. Imagine being free of your physical body, leaving behind silly things like
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