A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming (8 page)

There are hundreds of dreams in the Bible alone. As Christianity

continued to spread during this time, dreams were looked on as

being evil and sinful. Martin Luther spread the word that the devil

was responsible for dreams and that divine messages could only

be received through the church. St. John Chrysostom stated that

dreams were insubstantial. Come on guys, really?

Modern Times

After the Dark Ages dreaming was basically swept under the rug.

Anthropologist Raymond L. M. Lee notes that even after the

Renaissance “dreams were treated as unremarkable by-products of

psychological disturbances or bad digestion that possessed no real

value.” It wasn’t until the turn of the twentieth century that dreams

were brought out of the darkness by our friend Dr. Sigmund Freud.

He started an entire branch of psychology devoted to unlocking

his patients’ “unconscious” minds through the interpretation of

dreams.

Not only had the dust been brushed off the topic, but dreams

were now also seen in an entirely new light—they were secular.

Some of Freud’s ideas were soon challenged by his own student,

a radically thinking upstart named Carl Jung. Dr. Jung believed

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that dreams were not only about the past, but about the present

too. He felt that dreams show us what we are striving to achieve as

well as what stands in our way.

Jung didn’t completely abandon his teacher’s thoughts. He

accepted Freud’s basic structure and his theories on the language

of dreaming, along with the idea of interpreting dreams through

associations. And Jung wasn’t just observing patients; he was an

ardent dreamer. Take a look at his academic essays and you’ll find

some surprising topics: psychic powers, collective dreaming, and

telepathy. He believed we dreamed in the collective unconscious

(a shared space), and he coined the terms archetype and synchro-

nicity. Thanks to Jung, a lot of modern-day dream explorers were

inspired to think out of the box, exhuming ideas that had been

buried since the ancients.

PENNY FOR YOUR THOUgHTS

What do you think? are dreams private, separate experiences happening only
in each of our minds? Or is it possible that dreams take place in a shared and
collective place? as we have seen, many cultures believed the latter to be true.

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Who Has It Right?

Our ancestors had a totally different relationship to dreaming

than we do today. Dreams were an extension of the waking

world, a reality just as important as “real life.” Most of us have

been conditioned since childhood to look at these inner world

visions as “just dreams.” You don’t have to believe any of the ideas

that you just read, but we suggest considering them as possibilities,

no matter how alien they may seem.

Before writing this book, before we did some investigation

into the matter, we thought we knew what dreams were. Now,

some of the ancients’ ideas don’t sound so crazy to us.

So let’s do ourselves a favor and start from scratch. Imagine a

giant chalkboard filled with everything you know or think about

dreams, covered with words and diagrams, crammed and overlap-

ping with ideas. Now take a sponge, dip it in water, and run it

across the blackboard. Erase everything. Good. To relearn how to

dream all you’ll need is an open mind.

As our mothers taught us, believe nothing that you hear and

only half of what you see. Do not take our word, the words of

our ancestors, or even the words of modern psychology as gos-

pel. Instead, discover for yourself through experience what dreams

really are.

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The following chapters will give you the practical guidance

you need to become lucid. We’ll start with some basics, recon-

necting you with your nighttime journeys. No more wispy, cloudy

dreams for you. As you progress, you’ll begin to notice that

your dreams take on a potent and vivid quality; the memories will

be more complete.

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P a r t t w o

Packing

Your Bags

When we first took the journey to the dream world

and learned how to become lucid, the process wasn’t

very simple. We found numerous books and websites

on the subject, each offering a laundry list of techniques. We felt

that these sources of information didn’t speak to us; many were

too academic in tone and focus. The ones that weren’t dense and

complicated seemed to lack a straightforward path—they would

offer many different options and let you experiment and see what

worked. We found ourselves lost in the jungle, trying this way and

that. In the end, we did learn to lucid dream, and discovered bril-

liant techniques along the way. But looking back, we saw that the

road doesn’t need to be all that complicated.

As your guides, we don’t want you to go through the same

laborious process. We’ve decided to boil down all the numerous

techniques out there and present to you only the best. As we ven-

ture forth, it’s important that we give you a well-equipped toolbox

filled with the basics of lucid dreaming. We won’t tell you more (or

less) than what you need to know.

In this section you will learn how to reconnect to your dreams,

if you have lost touch with them, as so many of us have. You will

learn the single most powerful technique for inducing lucidity. By

the end of this section, you’ll be ready to jump into your own sub-

conscious and start exploring it. We know you’re excited, but take

your time. To master lucid dreaming, you first need to remember

your dreams, learn the art of a good intention, and build a healthy

suspicion of reality.

It’s just like learning to sail a boat. Before you become an

expert skipper, you need to learn how to steer the boat, how to

catch the wind, and what to do when you capsize. Master the boat

and you shall master the sea. Ahoy dreams!

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4

The REM Stage

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For the function of the brain which, during sleep, conjures up a completely
objective, perceptible, and even palpable world, must have just as large
a share in the presentation of the objective world of our waking hours.

For both worlds, although different in their matter,

are nonetheless made from the same mould.

—Arthur Schopenhauer,

pessimistic German philosopher

You’re trying to catch a train to a faraway place. You run

through the doors of the station and lift your arm to

check your watch, but when the steam whistle blows you

know that there’s only a minute to spare. Heart pounding, if your

feet aren’t quick enough to reach the platform in time, the train will

chug along without you. The window of time is closing quickly.

You see the train now, smoke pouring from its top. All aboard!

Out of breath, you leap through the air.

“Next stop, dreams!”

Safely on board, you take your seat. The rhythmic clickety-

clack of the wheels relaxes your body, and though you’re not quite

sure where you’re heading, you’re excited to be going there all

the same.

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We’ve explored the idea of what dreams are, but when do

they happen? Let’s scribble three letters onto our clean and empty

blackboard:
R-E-M.
No, we’re not talking about the 1990s pop-

rock sensation, we’re talking about the stage of sleep where dreams

occur. These modest letters couldn’t be more important for a lucid

dreamer. Let’s find out why.

Back in the early 1950s, Eugene Aserinsky was dead broke and

trying to support his family. Even though he never obtained an

undergraduate degree, he had managed to convince the University

of Chicago to let him attend as a graduate student. Dusting off

an old EEG machine found in the basement of a university build-

ing, Aserinsky hooked electrodes to the scalp of his son, Armond,

studying his sleeping patterns. The young wannabe scientist took

note of some curious readouts. During certain periods of the night,

Armond’s sleeping brain would suddenly shift, as if his brain were

wide awake.

Aserinsky had a good idea what was causing this anomaly: his

machine was broken. “If I had a suicidal nature, this would have

been the time,” Aserinsky recalled. “I was married, I had a child,

I’d been in universities for twelve years with no degree to show for

it. I’d already spent a couple of years horsing around on this. I was