thx robert for this interesting post, love your book!!
I am a lucid dreamer (and OBE´ler) since childhood; I am a yoga acharya, lifed quite a while in india, africa, all over europe and now australia …I studied all sort of mystical teachings, science and raja yoga …
in my case - asolutely NO reality check, no affirmation and absolutely NO technique - whatsoever - usually work; NOTHING:
I have spontaneous lucid dreams, and I consider OBEs as different from lucid dreams as the feeling is fundamentaly different, I dont have a body but a “cloud” which moves different than in a lucid dream; Very often I have a lucid dream which transforms into an OBE … for example:
Dream: I fly over a beach with people having fun, children playing, hear the sound of waves … I get lucid in the dream - until all of a sudden - I spot some kind of carpet borts - between the waterline / beach …
my feeling completly changes, the dream view slowly fades away … I cant move and float very slowly - 5 centimeters - with my face down … over the carpet 2 meters away from my physical body:
the feeling very often completly changes, and my dream reality turns into a quite boring/scary feeling to float around close to my sleeping physical body …
Robert - very often I experienced - that we DO NOT have one consciousness, but many, and they all record different dream / OBE / waking life memories; we seem to switch between more than one - individual experiences forward and backward!!!
THIS seems to be the reason why so many people CAN NOT lucid dream very often… because in fact … they CAN … but cant remember / download the extremly complex lucid dream / OBE memory into the physical brain!! ( a bit like robert bruce describes it in his book …)
The truth: ALL techniques work brilliant in my case BUT - the download of the momories only sometimes happens; So sometimes I wake up, I dont have ANY memory - keep lying in bed until - all of a sudden - I feel something in my spine / head and all of a sudden a complete memory appears out of nothing …
Regulary I try wild technique but only sometimes succeed - and always in some kind of unexpected way - it may turn into a “mild” experience, OBE or it works the next day when I didnt even try …
My explanation in combination to your post - there seem to be - more than one - consciousness within us: even during falling asleep, I always observe that the moment I mentally “let go/relax” … my mind starts weird thoughts about apples, beatles, childhood memories, not so much hypagogic lpictures than “unorganised, semiconscious” … dreamlike THOUGHTS - like the script for a dream, but not a dream …
the key to understand how to dream lucid is NOT some kind of technique, but the ability to have a lucid attitude (like tibetan BÖN tradition/zen awareness) AND the ability to “switch” into several other “selfes” / cooperate with unconsciousness itself; if one cannot do that - what is left is always the physical version of the memory - this means NO memory of the lucid dream / OBE at all - and being dissapointed because the technique didnt seem to work …
I had quite awesome experiences - one time I lifed a paralell life - I was just a little bit poorer, my father didnt study and we have been driving in a cheap car AND: I wasnt able to wake up!!! it was a 100% physical reality and I lived it for a few weeks - my memory cant exactly tell but I might have lived a paralell life till the end!
Another time I got lucid in a cube - went through a glass door and entered a time and formless realm where I knew absolutley everything! I was one with everything and knew all experiences the big “one” has ever made!! when I got back through the door into the 3 dimensional cube - I forgot everything, the only thing I took with me (into my physical brain) is that this state of consciousness exists …
serapis