Lucid Dreams: Silent Lucidity

“Lucid Dreams: Silent Lucidity”

by Jason Bellows

“There
was a time that I could fly. I jutted my right fist into the air, and
launched into the sky. My stomach dropped with the sensation of breaking
gravity’s bond, and the summer air cooled as I reached higher. When the
roads were so far below as to be an indistinct ashen blur, I halted and
curled my legs under me as I was pelted by icy crystals of clouds, and
surveyed all below. There was a moment of idle indecision, but in the
end it mattered not at all. I picked a direction and dove.

The
experience was one of my many brushes with Lucid Dreaming. It is a
phenomenon that many discredit, naming it a hoax and naturalist
mythology despite the fact that it has strong scientific evidence
supporting it as a real occurrence. With a devoted training regimen,
most anyone can learn to harness their own subconscious to experience
surrealistic events and places. In a controlled dream, one can pursue
anything from the cessation of nightmares, to investigating problems, to
engaging in sexual fantasies, to my personal choice—jetting around the
skies like Superman.

A lucid dream is one wherein the dreamer is
aware they are dreaming without waking up, allowing them to deliberately
participate in the dream’s events. Despite the stigma of being a new
age fantasy, there is a historical record of lucid dreams dating back to
the 5th century. In the year 415 AD Saint Augustine, a Christian priest
and philosopher, wrote of the dream of a man who was preoccupied with
concerns of the afterlife and what it was like. This man, Gennadius,
dreamed that he was visited by a youth “of remarkable appearance and
commanding presence”. Gennadius followed the person, and was taken to a
site that rang of singing that was “so exquisitely sweet” that it
surpassed any in his experience. St Augustine of HippoGennadius woke,
and figured the experience for merely a dream, possibly caused by
indigestion.

The very next night, however, Gennadius dreamed
again, and was again visited by the (apparently) androgynous young
guide. The guide asked if he was remembered, to which Gennadius replied
“Certainly!” The young guide then asked Gennadius if their meeting had
occurred in sleep or in wakefulness, and Gennadius replied, “In sleep.”
His guide told him, “You remember it well; it is true that you saw these
things in sleep, but I would have you know that even now you are seeing
in sleep.” The guide continued, “Where is your body now?” And Gennadius
answered “in my bed.”

Gennadius was therefore lucid—aware that
he was indeed dreaming, though there is no hint that he was controlling
the dream. Even without asserting his will on the dream state, Gennadius
found answers to the problems plaguing his mind, and was satisfied with
what he learned.

The eighth century saw the rise of the monastic
order that devised “The Tibetan Book of the Dead.” Some maintain that
this group knew more about dreams and controlling them than we do today,
but if that is the case, their book is woefully incomplete. The book
describes that when one dies, he will face experiences that result from
his “inner manifestations”–things akin to dreams. When one is faced with
these experiences, to know that they are dreamlike grants the deceased
an advantage in reaching enlightenment, and thus, hopefully, avoids
rebirth. To aid in this end, the monks developed a form of Yoga to help
in understanding the death or dream phenomenon.

In 1867 a popular
scientist named Marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denys published his book
“Dreams and How to Guide Them,” effectively demonstrating how anyone
could learn the skills of lucid and controlled dreaming—though that
moniker didn’t emerge until 1912.

One of our era’s most popular
discourses on lucid dreaming comes from the books by Jane Roberts, who
created a series of books collectively titled “The Seth Material”, it
was created when Jane channeled a spirit named Seth, who spent his time
returned to the corporeal world lecturing on dreams and death. There
seems little wonder that lucid dreaming has been labeled hopelessly
new-agey. Save for the work of Stephen LaBerge, the phenomenon of lucid
dreams may have been condemned to remain in obscurity.

It was the
year 1980 when LaBerge received his PhD in Psychophysiology from
Stanford, but his interest in dreams and altered states of consciousness
began in his childhood. LaBerge had some lucid dreams of his own, and
found it to be an interesting experience. Armed with the knowledge that
when a person dreams of a ping-pong game, his eyes will trace back and
forth as if watching the ball, LaBerge went to sleep, and allocated the
actual work to his trusty research assistant. Before LaBerge began his
doze, however, he and the assistant agreed on a signal that LaBerge
would convey with his eyes. The research assistant observed LaBerge’s
sleep, and verified that he had indeed entered a dream state, and then
awaited the agreed upon signal. After receiving the signal and having
the polygraph record it a number of times, LaBerge took his results to
the academic world. At first there was general resistance to his
theories. One fellow scientist said “there is no evidence that would
make me believe [in lucid dreams].” After noting the scientific irony in
that statement, however, resistance slowly diminished, and experiments
reproduced the same results around the country and the world.

Most
everyone’s had that one dream they want to go back to. Those who are
aware of their dreams can avoid nightmares, and those who control their
dreams can do most anything. Participants in scientific studies report
an enhanced sense of accomplishment and general betterment of mood. Some
even call it life-changing.

There are several techniques that
one can employ to achieve lucid or controlled dreaming, but broken down,
there are really two basic schools. Both require one to be able to
recall his dreams fairly well, and in both cases children take to it
easier than their adult counterparts. The first is analogous to making a
“controlled entry” into the dream, and is called the WILD
(wake-initiated lucid dream) method. In this technique one approaches
dreams from a meditative state, and tries to hold to lucidity while
slipping into the realms of the unconscious. Most agree that this method
is both more difficult and more frightening; it is not uncommon to have
feelings of floating above one’s own body or sinking into the black
depths of the mattress. There can be bursts of vertigo or dizziness, and
can seem somewhat akin to descriptions of

The more widely
accepted method is to come at the dream from the other end—to engulf
one’s self in the dream, then try to gain lucidity. This is done through
the use of “reality checks”, and is called the MILD (mnemonic induction
of lucid dreams) method. Dreams diverge from reality in many ways, and
many of them are fairly predictable. One must get into habits in waking
life that would highlight such differences. If one gets into the habit
of checking his watch twice in quick succession, in the waking world the
time will be the same, whereas in dreams the time will generally be
radically different. Some pinch their noses and try to breathe through
it; the flesh nose will be unable to, but the dream nose can breathe
unhindered. The trick I made use of in my experiments was to several
times a day ask: “am I dreaming now?” On the rare occasion that I
decided I was dreaming, I would immediately take to the sky.

Some
worry that there are dangers inherent to lucid dreaming, though there
are none evident. One can avoid unwanted dreams, practice that dreaded
speech in a mental crowd, or play the guitar like a god, among other
things. Despite the axiom that “one who dies in a dream dies in true
life,” there’s nothing to fear—if everyone who died in their dreams
never awoke, who would there be to deliver these warnings to us?”

- http://www.damninteresting.com/silent-lucidity
•
Resources: http://www.dreamtree.com/inside/?tag=lucid-dreaming
http://www.cleardreaming.com/