Lucid dreaming (lucid dreaming) describes the ability to know in the dream that one is dreaming. Dreams can be explored and changed if free will, imagination, and memory are retained. Your book is supposed to be a travel guide to this world, the authors collect techniques, develop them and bring them to simple forms. They want to show how people can get back in touch with their dreams, experience lucid dreams, and what to do as soon as they appear.
contents
- “The journey starts”
- What is a lucid dream?
- The benefits of lucid dreaming
- What are dreams
- Everyone dreams
- Understand dreams
- Theory 1) The computer brain
- Theory 2) Samples for the future
- Theory 3) chance occurrences
- The dream experience
- A story of dreaming
- Greeks and Romans
- Hindus, Tibetans and Chinese
- Indigenous peoples
- Christians
- Freud and Young
- Who is right
- Pack the suitcases
- The power of autosuggestion
- Remember dreams
- Healthy sleeping habits
- Wake up
- Write it down
- Conclusion
“The journey starts”
The authors first discuss the discovery of the phenomenon of lucid dreams in modernity by the British scientists Keith Hearne and Alan Worsley in 1975.
Worsley and Hearne agreed a sign: When Worsley was dreaming consciously, he made a certain eye movement to signal this to his colleague: eight times from left to right. The results were clear.
Hearne wrote: “The signals came from another world – the world of dreams. It was so exciting, as if they came from another solar system out in space. ”The EEG confirmed that the brain activity corresponded to that in consciousness.
Further tests confirmed the finding: Scientific evidence for lucid dreaming was provided.
What is a lucid dream?
In a lucid dream , the sleeper realizes that he is dreaming. Often the person notices that something is wrong, so he has to dream: He walks through walls, he is in a foreign country or animals are talking.
Those who achieve this clarity can fall back on the memories of the waking state, according to the authors. As a result, he can think logically, make decisions and “move in the exploration of the dream world as we would in the physical world.”
Lucid dreamers can directly influence the complete dream and its content, according to the authors. In contrast to a normal dream, the mind is alert enough to determine what is happening itself, for example “talking to dream characters, flying over a mountain range, breathing underwater, effortlessly stepping through walls …”
The perceptions of our senses are just as lively as in waking life: “We feel, smell, see, taste and hear just as well.” The setting appears real, although it is a pure projection of the mind. Even more: “This place brings wisdom and guidance that can change your life.
The benefits of lucid dreaming
“Some claim that lucid dreams are the best they’ve ever experienced,” write the authors, and many would indulge in them out of sheer thirst for adventure, to do things that are normally impossible. The first thing that would be tried would be to fly and have sex often.
Lucid dreams are perfect for living out unbridled fantasies. The experience could “jump to a giant peak in one sentence, encounter mythical creatures, have conversations with dead celebrities …”
You could defuse nightmares by making the person concerned get to the bottom of the cause of the horror and consciously looking the monsters in the face.
They are also the playground for creative people. Those who are aware of their dreams will find access to “an unbelievable fund of knowledge and inspiration.” The authors write: “If we assume that the dream world is a product of our subconscious, it is the ideal place to let our creativity run wild allow. Since it knows no restrictions, we can create pretty much anything in it that comes to mind. ”
Tuccillo, Zeizel and Peisel themselves are good examples of the connection between lucid dreams and creativity: They work full-time as screenwriters and filmmakers, where one or the other lucid dream will certainly provide them with ideas.
These could be a test field to test skills, to get help and advice for everyday problems. The authors point out that dreams have served as a means of psychological and physical healing for millennia, this has been proven since the ancient Egyptians.
They are a means of self-knowledge, like a mirror to see ourselves. Lucid dreams are a journey of research into ourselves and allow us to “deepen the connection to our inner being”; These are therefore a “practical instrument for spiritual research” and “a possibility to come into contact with the deeper levels of ourselves”.
What are dreams
The next chapter deals with what dreams are, what science knows about them (not much according to the authors), what historical cultures associated with them, i.e. in general about the nature of psychological activities during sleep.
According to the authors, these have always been part of our lives and have inspired us in almost all areas. That is why almost all cultures have “analyzed, appreciated and practiced as an art” this special form of experience in sleep at any time. Scientific breakthroughs, novels, inventions and works of art are thanks to them.
Elias Howe would have dreamed that cannibals would attack him and that their spears had a hole below the point. This was the template for the sewing machine he invented.
Mary Shelley was also inspired by her dreams. In fact, on the night of a legendary meeting on May 13, 1816, she dreamed of a student bending over a corpse that began to move with her lover Percy Shelley, the poet Lord Byron and Giovanni Polidori. This inspired her to her novel “Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus” published in 1818, one of the great works of the Gothic Novel.
Everyone dreams
Everyone dreams, on average about two hours every night, according to the authors. That’s about six years of pure dream time in a lifetime. Nevertheless, even in our scientifically advanced age, we don’t really know why this is happening, what happens while we sleep, and where we are going while we sleep, say the authors.
Understand dreams
The following chapter shows individual explanations. A classic for this was Sigmund Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams”, who considered dreams to be a form of wish fulfillment that arise from suppressed longings and conflicts. According to Freud, they are an attempt by the unconscious to resolve old conflicts.
To this day, there would be no agreement about what dreams are all about. Science is not even sure what the purpose of sleeping is.
Theory 1) The computer brain
These theories assumed that dreams organized memory so that we could process new information in the morning.
Theory 2) Samples for the future
According to this theory, dreams provide a framework for making connections between different thoughts and emotions; in them we would prepare for and act out future events.
Theory 3) chance occurrences
The activation synthesis theory, developed in 1977, assumed that they were a reaction of the brain to biological processes that take place during sleep, that is, to be senseless. The researchers Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley wrote literally: “Dreams are a by-product of the random bombardment with neural signals … and our cerebral cortex tries to make sense of the information generated:”
The dream experience
According to the authors, it is fundamentally wrong to view dreams as “kid stuff” or “a waste of time”. But this view is widespread in Western societies. Those who decide to do so could meanwhile develop their dream skills.
What we keep in our minds is not this itself. Like real experiences, experience in sleep has a now moment. Lucid dreams are about becoming aware of this now moment. To understand dreams, we would have to live the experience in the moment it unfolds. A story of dreaming
The authors explain that in shamanic cultures dreams were considered the key to realities that were hidden from the normal senses of the waking state. These other worlds were mistaken for real worlds by humans, overlapping with the physical world.
In these cultures they represented a connection to higher realities, a dream journey was the journey into the spiritual world. Those who did not have access to their dreams were considered by Native Americans to be cut off from their soul. They were existential for people’s lives.
As early as the 4th millennium BCE, the Sumerians documented dreams as prophecies from which mythical heroes in the waking world were guided. The ancient Egyptians considered them to be direct access to the spiritual world. In this way, the free soul Ba could detach itself from its body while sleeping and go on a journey. Dreams were used for knowledge and gave insight into otherwise hidden realities. The Egyptians had special dream temples in which they believed they would experience enlightenment.
Greeks and Romans
The ancient Greeks also saw sleep as a spiritual practice. They were sent directly by the gods, for example by Zeus, but also by Hypnos, the god of sleep and his son Morpheus, from whom the terms hypnosis and morphine are derived – evidence that states of intoxication and trance are also different from dreams were considered related.
Aristotle, who founded the scientific thinking of later times, however, denied that these came from gods and denied them meaning. Artemidor von Daldis finally published a five-volume work in which he not only examined individual dream symbols such as the crocodile (murderer) or the hangover (adulterer), but also grasped the individual meaning of these symbols.
The Romans took the Egyptians and Greeks as models in their dream interpretation and also founded dream temples. They believed in conscious transmigration of souls and that spiritual masters could communicate with dreams – regardless of time and place.
Hindus, Tibetans and Chinese
The Hindus, after all, considered the physical world to be a dream of the god Vishnu, and humans and other living beings to be figures of this dream. The world as we know it will therefore end when Vishnu stops dreaming. Hindus see dreams as more essential states of consciousness than the waking state.
According to the authors, Tibetans have been practicing dream yoga, a method of lucid dreaming, for at least 1000 years. For this they developed techniques and learned to accomplish tasks during this state, whereby the challenges increased with the abilities of the performer.
The tasks included changing shapes, talking to various animals and other dream characters. The aim of this dream yoga is to realize that life itself is only a dream. The clearer a yogi dreams, the closer he comes to this goal, to understand the dream state means to achieve absolute consciousness.
The Chinese sat down as early as 2000 BC. Chr intensely grapples with their sleep experiences. These dream journeys were shaped on the one hand by the cult of ancestors and on the other hand by belief in gods. In ancient China there was the body soul and the spirit soul. The spirit soul went on its journey at night when the body was sleeping, communicating with other souls and with the spirits of the ancestors. The Chinese believed that the spirit soul could leave its return to the body if the experiencer woke up too abruptly.
Indigenous peoples
The authors also use the term “tribal cultures” to bring together countless dream practices by indigenous peoples who believed that everything in the world was permeated with spirits and that dreams made it possible to travel to these usually invisible parallel worlds. These spirit worlds were just as real as the material world and also accessible to everyone.
Dream interpretation was elementary for all questions that concerned the individual and the community, whether hunting, healing or war.
Christians
In Europe, both the Catholic clergy and Martin Luther banished sleeping experiences to the kingdom of the devil, according to the authors. Only the church should be able to spread divine messages, but the devil sends dreams. On the other hand, however, the holy scriptures of Christians are full of those that were considered messages from God.
Freud and Young
In the modern age dreams played a shadowy existence, when they were not measurable and unprovable, they came close to mental disorders. According to the authors, this only changed with Sigmund Freud, who tried to fathom the “unconscious” by analyzing dreams.
Freud’s student Carl Gustav Jung went even further by seeing dreams not only as coming to terms with the past, but also as concrete clues for the present. Jung would have generally accepted Freud’s theories on dream language. Jung took up the shamanic notions and believed in a “collective unconscious”, in dream symbols that reappeared collectively, the “archetypes” and in synchronicities that would not be a coincidence but have meaning in people’s lives.
Who is right
After this brief outline of the assessment of dreams in different societies, the authors ask which approach is the right one. You do not answer this question, but see the various points of view on the subject as aids to thought and call on you to open yourself to your own dreams and find out for yourself “what they really are”.
Pack the suitcases
Logically, part 2 “Packing your suitcase” is about practically preparing for lucid dreaming. From their own experience with dream literature, the authors are trying to develop a common thread that serves as a kind of travel guide.
First of all, they explain the Rapid Eye Movement phase, i.e. the part of our sleep in which the eyes move quickly and in which we experience our epic dreams.
In these REM phases, our brain waves resemble the waking state. But instead of reacting to external stimuli, memories and thoughts now create the worlds of experience. This is immensely important for lucid dreams, because if we actively entered the REM phase, we could trigger lucid dreams.
The power of autosuggestion
Autosuggestions are decisive for this, i.e. thoughts that aim at very specific actions. The goal here is to become lucid in the dream. To do this, you should formulate your intention as precisely as possible, in the present, for example by saying “I am lucid and I am aware of my dream state” before going to sleep.
You can recall recurring dreams and visualize them with all five senses. You should also imagine a lucid state, that is, imagine that you are dreaming and gaining clarity in the process.
You should also expect to have a lucid dream and prepare carefully for it. According to the authors, you have two hours to practice every night.
You should give the highest priority to the desired state of lucidity when falling asleep, that is, this feeling of clarity as the last thing on your mind while you are falling asleep. With this, the wish reaches the dream world and can produce exactly what you want.
The authors summarize the autosuggestion in the sentence: “One of the greatest paradoxes is this: Exactly what we are looking for is crucial to find it at all.”
Remember dreams
It is crucial to remember your dreams. The better that succeeds, the more lucid dreams we would have. So it would be about building bridges that strengthen the dream memory. There are strategies for that.
These begin with the resolution to say to yourself as you go to sleep, “I remember my dreams” and to bring wandering thoughts back to this point. You can visualize yourself waking up in the morning and remembering your dreams in vivid detail. For this you can keep a dream diary in which you write down and paint your dreams.
You should also try to imagine the feeling you have when you wake up from a vivid dream.
Healthy sleeping habits
In order to dream clearly, healthy sleep rituals are necessary. For example, you can shower before going to sleep, do stretching exercises, meditate, write a to-do list and at least avoid watching TV for the hour before you go to sleep.
Always going to sleep at the same time is just as important as a bedroom as a place of silence and peace, where it is dark, comfortable and quiet. Alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, and coffee all negatively affected dreaming by suppressing the REM phase or lengthening the deep sleep phase.
Wake up
Just as important as a healthy sleep rhythm, according to the authors, is waking up slowly without moving, picking up the fragments that are floating around in your head from your last dream, and changing your sleeping position if you feel blocked in your dreams Pay attention to your emotions when you wake up and write down what you have experienced.
Write it down
Systematically writing down dreams and rereading, associating and interpreting what they have written is so important to the authors that they wrote an entire chapter about them.
They give tips on how to keep a meaningful dream diary and compare this with the travel diaries of researchers. In the first 5 minutes after waking up, people would have forgotten more than half of their dream content, and after ten minutes even 90%.
Therefore, in the first minutes after waking up, you should write down in key words what kind of dream images you have in you. This is the best way to remember them. It would often happen that people remembered long and vivid dreams just when they were keeping a dream journal.
You should put the dream diary on the bedside table so that you can write directly into it when you wake up and write down the time and place when you go to bed. This would subconsciously prepare you for a diary entry the next morning. If you wrote in the present, you could better imagine the dream.
If you reread it, you could give the dream a title that summarizes the contents. This helps with the interpretation and makes it easier to find older dreams again in later dream work.
You should also make a note of whether the dream in question was lucid, what triggered this lucidity and how long it lasted.
The following three parts are about “exploring a new world”, “mastering the terrain”, and “new shores”. How can nightmares be defused, how can healing and wholeness be achieved, how do lucid dreams help self-knowledge? In the end there is even a vision for the future.
Conclusion
The great strength of the book is the understandable introduction to dream techniques, which can be implemented chapter by chapter. Those who want to dream lucidly can check themselves how to achieve this, and if they dream clearly, how to improve this and what results they can get. The authors convey these exercises in a vivid way and show time and again that dreaming is not a compulsory exercise, but an adventure.
Anyone who reads this book from beginning to end can immediately begin to optimize their sleep rhythm and write a dream diary and, with a little discipline, will probably soon have lucid dreams and remember them.
The practical exercises are also recommended for people who have already trained with yoga, techniques of shamanism , creative writing or other methods to activate pictorial thinking.
The book is particularly suitable for beginners who are confused in the labyrinth of dream theories and finally want to work with their own dreams. The great advantage of this work is that it creates a guide in an undogmatic manner. So it’s not about which dream symbol means what, but about what a person can do with his own dreams and how he recognizes them. The authors do not act as strict overseers, but take the dreamer by the hand to explore a nocturnal realm.
