carlos castaneda's LD techniques

i think that castaneda’s art of dreaming has a few techniques for lucid dreaming. i tried reading the book, but i felt it very boring. if any one has read the book, please post the content that is related to lucid dreaming from his book.he also mentions about gates to lucid dreaming. can you describe them?

directly posting the content from the book would be copyright infringement. I have read the book, but it was ages ago. The one thing I remember is that you have to look at your hands during the day and ask if you are dreaming, and then you will become lucid when looking at your hands at night. Kind of like a reality check.

thanks a lot for the reply. at first, i was shocked to see the reply from the admin.
but i want to know more about castaneda’s LD techniques but do not have the time to read the entire book.

You are allowed to post excerpts and quotes, right? :smile:
I haven´t read the book, was it Castaneda that first introduced the hand technique? That you should look at your hands and tell yourself that when you see your hands in your dream you will realize you´re dreaming? Or is that another technique?

if i am correct then yes your are alowed to “quote” a book or other things as long as your are useing it to better discribe what your are talking about.

books are made to be shared

yet they also are revenue ,

if you can you can buy it then, but by all means knowledge is to be given to all who seek it ,

so perhaps you should get one from a library ? this is a good compromise, as reading on screens, is this enjoyable or as good as reading a book physically ?

you can find the gates of dreaming he describes freely in most any google search result too! it is only a small section of the book.

ok, after searching thoroughly for the gates of lucid dreaming, i found a good version at nagual net. i am copy pasting some content from the site with a few modifications and comments.
1.The first gate is to be aware of a particular sensation right before one fall’s asleep.To bridge intent from the waking world to the dreaming world, an object such as the hands is selected and held in the minds eye for as long as possible with no internal dialogue. Chances are if one fall’s asleep with no internal dialogue they may find themself awake and Dreaming somewhere else before they even know it.This is where one crosses the first gate.
i think the first gate simply describes about the way to get lucid.we may skip this because we already know many techniques to become lucid.
2.First by learning to control the dreaming attention to only focus on a few things at once the dreamer will find that if it only looks
at things in glances, thing’s won’t change or
dissolve.When the dreamer can hold a dream in place
without it changing its time to work on the second gate.

The dreamer comes to the second gate when
a dream is in focus and it is intended,
or willed to be changed. Either by
absorbing ones attention in on a single object
and intending the dream change that way,
or by laying down and falling asleep…and
dreaming that you have another dream…

The key is to maintain awareness during
both/either shifts.
SO, first you have to stabilize the dream and its contents by method prescribed above, which is rather a new concept.then you have to teleport or fall asleep and enter another dream.

  1. The dreamer
    comes to the third gate when it dreams
    itself. Literally. One dreams they see their
    sleeping body and after a careful (but not long)deliberation, decide’s to walk away.
    this is not explained well and subject to debate.
    4.The fourth gate involves sending the dreaming
    body, or rather, dreaming the dreaming body
    into concrete places in this world.
    5. The fifth gate of Dreaming is crossed when you have realized, while Dreaming, that your Dream is just as concrete and solid as your normal waking world. While Dreaming, you have become aware of the internal dialog of your Dreaming (energy) body.

6.The sixth gate of Dreaming is crossed when you can finally stop your Dreaming internal dialog and touch absolute Dreaming silence. This silence is absolutely severe. It is not the same silence you enter when you turn off your first attention internal dialog. This second attention silence can literally kill you.

7.The seventh gate of Dreaming is crossed when you can jump back and forth between the silence of your first and second attention, at will, with the totality of your being.
this concept of gates seems very confusing. please post what you have understood and your comments

thanks for posting those! Wow I had totally forgotten about them, only remembered the hand thing. The total silence he is talking about reminds me of the void in lucid dreaming, that total space of notingness one can find oneself in sometimes.

only 4 gates are mentioned in the art of dreaming. the rest is speculation, though useful practices