Control Your Dreams: How Lucid Dreaming Can Help You Uncover Your Hidden Desires, Confront Your Hidden Fears, and Explore the Frontiers of Human Cons

251 Pages·1989·1.39 MB·English

by  Jayne Gackenbach

"If we were to look more closely at our dreamworlds, we might discover
terrain as varied and compelling as any we have known while awake. And,
once honed, our night vision could reveal the architecture of futuristic cities,
the voice of a friend long dead, the attics of homes we once knew and have
buried out of reach of waking memory. We might glimpse the spaceships of
an alien culture, smell the sweet familiar scent of ripe corn, or spend an
evening listening to the pulse of drumbeats around a tribal fire. The roads of
our dreamworlds run through both space and time, linking what we have
imagined, illuminating the movement of our lives in a rich brocade of
metaphor."
This book is about a special type of dream, a dream in which you realize you
are dreaming, not after you awaken and think to yourself, "Oh, that was a
dream," but one in which you say to yourself while in the dream, "Oh, I'm
dreaming!" These dreams are called lucid dreams and though not everyone
has had one, most people can learn to have one. We'll tell you how.
This book is also about why you might want to have a lucid dream. It
details how lucid dreaming may enhance your psychological well-being and
perhaps influence your health. It is an exploration of how lucid dreams
challenge our notions of what is real and what is illusion, and about what it
means, after all, to be conscious.
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
Go on a date with Mel Gibson, discuss
the meaning of life with Freud, control
your nightmares or learn your own
deepest secrets and fears through
lucid dreaming - the remarkable
technique that lets you "live your
dream."
Many of us never remember our dreams; many
others remember, but only in bits and pieces;
some remember only nightmares that wake
them up in a cold sweat. But a group of people
know how to be aware when dreaming, and
every night for them is a new adventure. If
they've been having the same nightmare night
after night, they can tell themselves, "It's only
a dream," stop being afraid, follow the night
mare to the end, and learn what the problem
is. Some people can never have one of these
lucid dreams, but many can. Control Your
Dreams can show you if you're one of those
who can, how to do it - and why.
With exercises and techniques taken from
the most recent scientific lucid-dream
research, you'll learn how to fly and how to
use lucid dreaming for creative work, for heal
ing, and for meditation. The most recent find
ings in dream research are fully presented and
explained; true stories of other dreamers'
adventures show you how they have dis
covered the benefits of lucid dreaming.
Finally, the authors introduce you to the most
advanced of lucid dreamers - those who are
using the techniques of this book to explore
the limits of human consciousness.
Dr. Jayne Gackenbach is a world-
renowned figure in dream research, a past
president of the Association for the Study of
Dreams, and the author of several scholarly
books on dreaming. She lives in Edmonton,
Canada, with her husband and two children.
Jane Bosveld is a contributing editor to
Psychology Today, a former senior editor for
Omni, and has worked on the staffs of Ms. and
Science Digest. She lives in New York City.
Jacket design ©1989 by George Corsillo
Harper & Row, Publishers
10 East 53rd Street
C O N T R OL
How Lucid Dreaming Can Help You Uncover
Your Hidden Desires, Confront Your
YOUR
Hidden Fears, and Explore the Frontiers
of Human Consciousness
D R E A MS
by Jayne Gackenbach
and ]ane Bosveld
1817
Harper & Row, Publishers, New York
Grand Rapids, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco
London, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto
CONTROL YOUR DREAMS. Copyright © 1989 by Jayne Gackenbach &c Jane Bosveld. All rights
reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row,
Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gackenbach, Jayne, 1946-
Control your dreams: how lucid dreaming can help you uncover your hidden desires, con
front your hidden fears, and explore the frontiers of human consciousness/by Jayne Gacken
bach and Jane Bosveld. - 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Dreams. 2. Success. I. Bosveld, Jane. II. Title.
BF1091.G28 1989
154.6' - dc20 89-45040
To Our Parents
Contents
Foreword vii
Acknowledgments xiii
What's in a Dream xvii
Part One: The Journey Begins
Chapter 1 Conversations in the Night:
The Meaning and Power of Dreams 3
Chapter 2 Inducing the Light:
A Guide to Learning How to Lucid Dream 21
Chapter 3 Looking Inside the Dream:
Songs, Sex, and the Thrill of Flying 38
Chapter 4 Night Coach:
The Creative Link 58
Chapter 5 Phantoms in the Night:
Confronting Your Demons in Lucid Dreams 79
Chapter 6 The Healer Within:
Can Dreams Keep You Healthy? 100
vi Contents
Part Two: Biology and Consciousness
Chapter 7 Dreaming Buddhas:
UFOs, Butterflies, and the Case for Meditation 123
Chapter 8 The Paradoxical Dream:
Decoding the Dreaming Brain 139
Chapter 9 The Right Stuff:
What It Takes to Be a Lucid Dreamer 155
Chapter 10 The Evolving Soul:
Moving Toward Pure Consciousness 177
Resources 204
Bibliography 206
Index 227
Foreword
Jayne Gackenbach and Jane Bosveld have done all of us who
are interested in our inner lives a great service in writing this book.
Modern sleep research has shown that we spend about 20 percent
of our sleep in the dream state, or about an hour and a half for
an eight-hour sleeper. If you could dramatically improve the qual
ity of that dream life, it would be like increasing the life expec
tancy of your conscious life by 10 percent. That's quite an
improvement! What is this improvement?
From the perspective of the waking state, most dreams are, to
put it bluntly, stupid. We are not mentally clear in them. We don't
recognize the reality of our situation, namely that we are dream
ing, not in the ordinary physical world, and we don't have our
full waking skills and powers of observation, memory, reason,
volition, etc. Dreams can sometimes be unpleasant or boring, but
we usually cannot do anything about frustrating dream situations
vii