“A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read.”
– The Talmud
Lucid Dreaming: Lucid dreaming is consciously perceiving and recognizing that one is in a dream while one is sleeping, sometimes leading to control over the “dreamscape”, or the faux-reality dream world within a dream. Stephen LaBerge, a published author and expert on the subject, has defined it as simply realizing that one is dreaming while in a dream.
Out of Body Experience (or OBE): A phenomena whereby a person, usually lying down, feels projected from their body to see themselves, or travel to far distant locations, or even nonphysical realms.
Out of Body Experiences
I remember back to when I was in 7th grade, back in Jr High School. I had a running nose all day, and I remember my father telling me to take this medicine if it didn’t get better by noon. Lunch time was quickly coming to and end and I decided to take the allergy pill. I went to class like normal and we began the silent reading time whereby all students at the school had to sit down and read. I sat down and started to read but I started noticing that the pill I had just taken was making me very sleepy. I’m not the type of person that ever falls asleep during class and despite my best efforts to remain awake I passed out and went right to sleep. The next thing I noticed was feeling light, and to my surprise I was staring at myself. How was this possible? I am somehow looking down at myself from the top of the ceiling. I then start looking around. I looked down at some other poor guy that fell asleep in the classroom as well a few desks away. I then also ‘floated’ over to see what the teacher was reading. And in an instant flash I feel this falling or sinking sensation, and I wake up with a huge jerk when the bell rang.
What had just taken place?
To master the separation of consciousness from the physical body is no simple feat. I’ve been able to achieve the same results only a handful of times. The only way to describe the moments leading up to the experience of being out of body is similar to that of having a built up excess of energy. You know that sensation you get when you leg falls asleep? well, now imagine that sensation but in some weird different way and throughout your entire body. I’ve gone through many techniques written up by many people and those taught to me in secret, but with little success.
Another time I experienced full projection was when I was woken up early in the morning, I felt incredibly tired, and once again that fuzzy sensation was throughout my entire body. I feel quickly back asleep…but this time I woke up to myself floating. The one place that I love more than anywhere else in the world is the California Sierra Nevada’s…just the majestic trees alone is beyond breathtaking. This time I was following a road from the perspective of being at level with the tops of trees. I could see snow gently falling all around me but I felt no sensation of coldness, in fact, I couldn’t even see any part of my body. It was as if my consciousness was just present, but somehow, I was seeing without my body or eyes. I was traveling from above, following the lonely road from below wrapped in deep forest for as far as I could see.
I felt the feeling of acceleration and motion, however, I couldn’t feel the wind. You know that sensation inside your solar plexus when you’re riding a roller coaster, yeah, similar to that. And the perception was as if I had just drank 10 energy drinks, I was “wide awake” and seeing as vivid as you’re reading this right now. I felt alive. I was soaking it all in, floating in different ways back and forth. I didn’t quite understand how any of this worked…so I wanted to experiment. I thought perhaps this may have been just me lucid dreaming, which I do quite often, so I decided to just let my ‘dream’ take over and move back as a passive participant in the dream. However, this was not a dream. I began losing control of my flight and slowly began to descend. I recall going over camp sites, seeing people in RV’s…this must have been a campground of some kind. But I was losing moment and descending slowly. Past more densely forested areas and I began to panic, I couldn’t regain any control no matter what I tried. I ultimately landed in what seemed like thick bushes, motionless, unable to change my perspective (by that I mean move my eyes around, etc). There I remained for what literally seemed hours despite all efforts to ‘wake up’ or change my location. As I was there motionless I could hear animals in the distance and what sounded like squirrels coming and going past me. It was intense. I later woke up and felt that sensation of ‘falling’ or ‘snapping’ back into place.
The key to projection is being able to building up that energy as I previously mention and pushing away from your physical self which is the difficult part. Once you feel that tingling sensation throughout your entire body simply feel as if you body is weightless in the vacuum of space and thrust yourself forward or out.
Lucid Dreaming
Another form of mental projection is known as Lucid Dreaming: to dream and yet know that you are dreaming. I can personally recall countless times when I am having a nightmare and in my dream I stop, calm myself down, observe what is going on, and either continue on to a different dream or choose to wake myself up. If I choose to continue I then have option of changing the reality of inside the dream. It’s almost like being inside a movie studio set and just simply walking to another movie set, as simple as that.
Laziness and tiredness play a crucial role in this. There have been several times when I am in control in my dream and then simply choose to become a passive actor in my dream (in other words, one who just goes with the flow). Most of the times I’m so tired that when I fall asleep I don’t give the slightest care for what happens in my dream. That being said, I feel that it is also a good to see what my mind can conjure up and how I will subconsciously act in the various situations.
Taking Lucid Dreaming a step further is when I visit places that I have never seen before or meet people I have never met. People might contest this by saying that I might have seen it somewhere before subconsciously, in a magazine, on tv, and that it is simply your mind bringing up this random image to set the stage for the dream. This is true in a lot of instances, however, the is a clear distinction is the level at which I perceive the situation. The difference being the amount of details I am able to perceive and with that, of course, would be the level of control I am able to take.
When you are regular Lucid Dreaming, you may be a to control a lot of situations and even, how you approach those situations. Within the dreamscape you may enter a house, walk around the various rooms, however, while you continue walking around the room layouts may alter dramatically. For example, you may enter a room you were in previously, but now somehow, you walk to the backyard. You’re still limited to within the dream and these dramatic changes or differences do not bother you.
Another example of regular Lucid Dreaming would be when I am trying to find an answer within my dream to a question that I have in my normal life, there have been several instances when I pull open a book that contained the answers I needed, I read it word for word, then quickly wake up and write it down. I later go back to read what I wrote and it’s complete jibberish. The dream scrambles together random words that at the time, within the context of the dream, seem completely logical and even if you’re Lucid Dreaming, seems completely rational!
“Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.” -Sigmund Freud
Beyond Dreaming
Beyond DreamingControlling your dreams is the first step. Simply stop and realize that you are in control and change whatever you want. Your dreams are a blank canvass. That being said, there is another level to which you can use your current state of ‘openness’ to go beyond dreamland. Being in a state of physical passiveness and mental openness can lead to new experiences. Even as a passive participant you may receive clues or glimpses into other worlds.
Three levels of ‘Lucid Dreaming’:
- Stationary
- Moving/Transitional
- Outside
Stationary Dreaming
Let’s break down the three levels of ‘dreaming’ in the context of Lucid Dreaming.
First is Stationary dreaming, whereby the influence is gradual or only temporary. To better understand let us use a metaphorical spaceship in order to help understand these three levels.
When you dream, you jump onboard your imaginary spacecraft. There’s a lot of knobs, buttons, and mechanisms that are a little beyond your understanding. However, this is your stage, your private world, you create (either passively or actively) these melodramas or situations in which you become a part of. The possibilities are endless. But for the most part your metaphorical spaceship stays stationary or may hover around.
Your spaceship also has windows. For the most part you pay no attention to these windows. These windows are momentary glimpses in time, both present and future. Sometimes within your spacecraft you will catch a temporary glimpse from one of these windows, but remember, it’s only a glimpse. It may or may not effect your inner dreamscape. In some instances, the light from outside may be too much to ignore and will effect you emotionally and will also reflect within the dreamscape.
Deja-Vu’s are usually a result of glimpses during this time. Sometimes out of nowhere, while awake, you get the feeling that you have been there before or have seen this happen before. I personally believe that it is due to dreams that one cannot fully remember, but upon being in that situation triggers the subconscious to make the connection.
Another good example is when while in a passive dreaming state I dreamt that there was an earthquake. In the dream this small glimpse of an earthquake that became ‘over-exaggerated’, I saw a school on top of this hill near where I live topple over and it turned into this post-apocalyptic survival scenario. I woke up and continued on my morning as usual, oddly I told my parents about my dream and coincidentally had to also write about the dream I had for school assignment on dreams. I usually never share my dreams with anyone, but that day I did. Funny enough that afternoon there was a rather large earthquake and everybody who knew of the dream I had gave me the weirdest looks.
Moving/Transitional Dreaming
The next stage is what I call Moving/Transitional Dreaming, this is when the glimpses become more prolonged and vivid than normal. I believe in these cases your subconscious, or spaceship in this case, travels to specific areas. While the melodramas continue within your dream, the outside influences may be more than just temporary glimpses. Within this stage outside influences can show you things through the windows of your spaceship.
One example may be of specific larger worldly events that can’t go by unnoticed, you catch a glimpse, and as it grabs your attention you then begin to stare out the window to watch the events unfold more and more. Your subconscious in this case does not fill in the missing gaps with dramatic scenarios, or if it does, it’s very limited. You usually recall these events like vivid movies.
The key point to take away is that you travel or transport yourself to that specific area. Sometimes you only able to stare outside your windows, sometimes it may feel interactive, as if you’re part of the scene, but remember that in this stage you are actually still inside your spaceship and your creating a mental or dream scenario in which you are part of the event.
Where things can get really intense is when you realize that outside influences can show you things through your window. Sometimes things may be shown to you describing in detail what will happen, what to do, or hints as to who you might meet. We all possess freewill, however, if your freewill is aligned with someone else’s or tied to a specific area you may be given a warning, clue, or broad glimpse. It may not necessarily be real, or 100% specific, but rather a tiny glimpse that your subconscious then begins to formulate a scenario or situation around.
Two quick examples from my life. The first example was when I had a dream I was on an expedition in the Amazon jungle with people I had never met, we were searching for a lost city. I had never been to the Amazon at that time, and yet, there I was. The dream got exaggerated upon when a plague of locusts surrounded us and then I woke up. Years later I would end up in the jungle and I couldn’t help but think this was part of what I had dreamt about years earlier.
My second example was when I had been researching a specific lost city in the Amazon for months and months. We had been trying to map out routes to different locations and how to get there. One night I had a vivid dream where I was shown a map. On this map I could see the various rivers. The voice told me to go down this specific obscure river, and to take the second stream break upwards after the large curve. I woke up and immediately drew it out. I then pulled out my map, and sure enough, there it was, the same exact river and streams with the second stream going upwards after the large curve. I have yet to travel up there so I have no way of verifying my information. However, in a book I later read, an anthropologist stated that along that river, in that general area the indigenous people did not venture as it was inhabited by spirits which they believed occupied various ruins.
Outside
Lastly, dreams can also help you reveal something or help solve a specific problem you might encounter. In some of these situations, you can venture outside your spaceship, in what I call the Outside. When you venture outside you are no longer limited to the dreamscape, but can obtain answers at will. It’s almost similar to Out of Body Experiences, but yet, you are Lucid Dreaming and in control of what comes and goes.
It’s here that you can visit people that you wish to help or encounter, or assist those in need. Or maybe you just need access to that universal book of knowledge known to some as the Akashic records. By using this as a stage of Lucid Dreaming to your advantage you can solve countless problems that you wouldn’t be able to in your wake state.
A simple example of how I used it in the past was when I was writing out music. I was trying to figure out how to write out a specific part in Carl Orff’s O Fortuna score, I had been wracking my brain for days and couldn’t figure out the simple phase. I had written everything out except that one part. One night I fell asleep and recall walking up to the score that was laid out in front of me, note by note, I saw skimmed to the phrase I was in need of and quickly woke myself up and plugged it into my score writing software, it was a perfect match.
Here is where things get truly bizarre. It was years later that I later came across the actual score in its entirety while browsing a library collection. The three questions I asked myself were, if I had truly visited this score while I was dreaming? did I access it from some universal consciousness like the Akashic records? or, because I saw it physically in the future did I tap into my future memory?
Conclusion & Hints
This is just my personal journey into my dreamland and a few examples of what we can achieve. The transition into a new realities and experiences is quite incredible if you can use it to your advantage. Practice makes perfect and there is no excuse for not having time to practice, especially since you’re asleep. When you fall asleep extremely fatigued your dreams are probably more vivid, but yet you play a passive role. If you’re not completely mentally drained you should have opportunities to be control if you so chose. Here are some quick hints:
- Remind yourself as you’re falling asleep that you want to be in control. Reiterate it several times to yourself and have the will power to make yourself aware of your surroundings in your dream.
- STOP! In the middle of dreams we become so caught up that we forget we can control our dreams. It’s as simple as just stopping and breaking away from the melodramas unfolding.
- Set your alarm to five hours after you fall asleep. Wake up, splash water on your face, and then go back to sleep. This usually helps as that momentary snap from REM sleep allows you to go straight back into REM but with more attention to alertness.
- Wake yourself up slowly so as to remember your dreams. Be sure to write down your experiences quickly before you forget.
I personally feel that by writing your dreams down you can interpret your own life through a different symbolic lens and it also helps to document what you were able to do within a dream which will set the stage for further growth. It’s also a good idea to research on REM cycles of sleep. Just remember to have fun. You can experiment with various techniques to do incredible things. I stopped reading other people’s articles and experiences after realizing most people were just making up the extent of their experiences and abilities within their dream. Experiment, everyone is different and may have different results based on different techniques. For example, for me, flying comes easy within my dream if I focus solely on solar plexus and push that tickling heavy sensation down towards my feet. Give it a try!
Lastly, for projection techniques I think I will need to save for another article as the techniques are just too complicated and I will want to cover other governmental experimentations on the subject. In the meantime, please read my previous article on Dreamwalking.
Anyways, pleasant dreams!
Recommended books to learn more:
- A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness: A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation
- Wisdom of the Mystic Masters
- Modern Magick: Twelve Lessons in the High Magickal Arts
- The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites & Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order
- The Tree of Life: An Illustrated Study in Magic