If you want the room to be brighter, just say “i shoulden’t be wearing these stupid sunglasses” and they will appear to be there.
then just take them off
Flo-- Thanks for explaining in more detail. Your post was fascinating. Your control gained through meditation is admirable. I now understand that your Pitch Black “Intermediate Area” is, of course, different than the dark beginning-of-journey place to which I was referring. I was speaking of an experience closer to Sentient’s (Sentient: BTW, interesting that you’ve read about the University representing the beginning of other people’s dreamscapes- thanks for sharing!).
I think I’ve had a few experiences with the “low astral” through what I thought were OBE 's , but they were so completely horrifying that I stopped remembering dreams altogether for months afterwards. And those experiences are the reason that I began conjuring weapons to defend myself a the beginning of all my LD 's: Fear.
flo
You should read some of jeff’s posts. He does some work with meditation and self hypnosis in LD’s. I have not tried it yet but it sounds interesting. I beleive that Dm7 can do it also.
Thessaly,
a dark place in a dream is not far from intermediate state. A little different but not far. For me, even a dream could be called “intermediate state” now, because the 2 states are merging. But for a “normal” LDer, yes, dark place and OBE are perceived as different. For example, at the beginning (my 200 first LDs), I was not able to get absolutely dark places in dreams. But after doing many OBEs, I noticed that my dreams could turns the same “horrifying way”, turn into OBEs, some of them being very frightful… In 1996, I even stopped 6 months because I had too many problems with an “astral entity”, which I called the mattress demon (this sonofab… was under my bed). In 1999 only, I managed to swap consciousness with him (yes !) and after several times he disappeared. After this, dream and OBE-state began to merge.
That was good to remind me that perception and dream phenomena change with practice… and that helps me to understand why Sentient did not understand the similarity between his dark dreams and OBE-state.
Milod, I will try to find Jeff. I read many posts since 2 days but don’t remember who is Jeff…
I have prayed in LD’s which is another form of meditation too. The results were impressive. I found myself travelling as a result.
I still have to try things like praying in tongues, or christian meditation on scripture etc.
I don’t get your point of ‘fear’ though. I haven’t ever had fear in an LD, or in dreams (not even when I was ‘shot’ in an ND). I have never carried weapons in an LD, too.
Your experience though reminds me of Dark night of the soul, somehow.
Hi Clarkkent,
if I believe what I see in your signature, you have 33 LDs now. According to my dream journal, half-intermediate-state appeared rather quickly, but strange phenomena linked with OBE-state appeared dream 83, and bad trips appeared dream 153. Problems took time to come.
The Dark night of the soul is not exactly this. It is replacing phenomena by their absence. For example, a guy becoming monk will leave the worldly life and replace it by the absence of distractions. This absence is a mental construction, it has the appearance of void. Everyone experiments void in meditation. Intermediate state in the equivalent while dreaming.
As I said in another post, void is not emptiness (what buddhists call emptiness is what christians call God).
In takes much time before void is replaced by God. The Dark night is the void, as mental construction.
Fear is different. It is dynamic. Void is depressing.
Not exactly - dark night is something which applies to all Christians at some point or another (or may apply) not just monks… 
Never mind… (mind you emptiness is not God and the latter isn’t a mental construction - far from it! but let’s not get into that…)
Wouldn’t Laberge and other experienced oneironauts have encountered the same thing if it were something which applies to everyone? I suspect it may not apply to all. Has it been reported in the literature?
Did you suffer from nightmares? Have you tried talking to these things, considering they may be mental constructs? Reality checks where you mention obe’s ? because WILD is not normally an OBE, just an LD (I subscribe to Laberge’s idea that most likely it’s an LD)
Are you on any medications? Sorry if I ask these questions, but they may be related… who knows…
They did. My best friend wrote a 2000 pages thesis on LD, he had 100 subjects. There is a whole chapter about intermediate state in his work. He discovered the thing several years before me and used the same name.
In literature, what I am speaking of is well documented under the terms “low astral”.
How many dream diaries did you read ? Are you really interested in other’s stuff ? It is reported in many places, but you have to see it.
The reality you see is a mental construct, you know.
I know. I speak of OBE, because many people don’t agree with you. If I say WILD, OBErs will say I am not speaking for them, if I say OBE, LDers will say I am nuts. So I say “intermediate state”, and nobody understands.
Never.
I feel you lack information about other people’s experiences. How many other’s dreams did you really read ?
For example, you will find one of these intermediate state’s bad trip right here, in this forum :
ld4all.com/forum/?https://www.ld4 … key=e486a6
I forgot :
Just a technical question : have you been buddhist ? What do you know of buddhism to tell this ?
Same technical question : what do you know about mental construction ? About mind ? How much time did you spend to this ? Would you say that you know mind better than a monk who spent 30 years in a cave ?
Don’t take it badly, but I have the feeling that you are talking about things without experience. Really, how much can you know about LD with 33 LDs ? It makes no sense.
flow
I think the thread was called advanced lucid dreaming. If I can find it again I will post a link to it.
You have a good friend! 
I think that link isn’t going to work…
Very clever idea, I did that once and it made the dream almost TOO bright.
r3m0t
Yep, you are right the link does not work. 
Yes, I think it’s because of the php.
It’s in “Beyond dreaming”, topic : Has Anyone ever gone to ‘‘Heaven’’ or ‘‘Hell’’ in a LD?
Laberge doesn’t mention it on his site or ETWOLD. I read a set of papers on LDing but there was no reference. I googled Laberge and low astral
and there was no result.
I’ve read a lot of diaries but I didn’t encounter this yet…
Reality isn’t just a construct but a construct based on actual sensoral perception.
“many people”? I don’t believe that a survey was held on this, please be serious.
Ok medications might have effects such as nightmares. It is not as farfetched as you think.
On the other hand you are wrong about what I’ve read. I’ve read most of the dreams posted in the dream diary section of this site as well as others such as fishbowl, sealife (my team), most dreamviews and some from LIF.
Your link wasn’t to a diary.
I did find references to ‘intermediate state’ - in one it meant the state of LDing (with no problems I might add), and in another it was a reference to a connection between waking and sleeping memory. Of course not everyone agreed to the latter.
A reference to a paralysed ‘intermediate state’ with monsters when the person was a child:
alt.dreams.lucid
had a reply that the state was likely HI.
Another reference called the state of WILD, ‘intermediate state’.
Cardinal Ratzinger wrote on the difference, I read what he wrote and I read a lot about buddhism too.
I take 2000 years of experience with God in the Church to be much better than 30 years in a cave. God is not a created being thus not a mental contruct. God is the prime mover/creator. We’re talking about more than mind, you know.
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I don’t take it badly. I do have experience (besides LDing) which you don’t know of, excuse me. Now since you want to bring this up, you’ve posted here how many times, around twenty times and how many times have I posted here? close to a thousand posts which much more than you. Not that I want to brag about posts - if you post once and say something interesting, then that’s well. But you must expect somebody not to see things in the same way as yourself or not to believe all you write. (eg. the getting objects from dreams thread some time ago).
Besides, how many LD’s did you have? How can one know whether what one writes is the truth? One might write that one had a thousand LD’s and it might not be the truth. Plus, how important is number?
Hi,
What you think about religion will not change my life, so you were right saying that we should forget the subject.
I am serious.
Search for “OBE” you will find so many people being sure that it is different from WILD that you cannot count them. So, I consider they are “many”.
You will not find “intermediate state” in google, but you will see it in dream reports, if you know what it is.
Now, I have no need to convince you. You are on the other side of the planet. Many people are on the other side of the planet (will you ask for statistics ?), many are totally insane, many are not, and what ? I am sleeping well. Billions of people are not sharing my point of you, one more, one less, no problem.
flo
Let me just say I enjoy your posts. I think you give us a lot to think about. Let me just tell you that not all LD ‘res will think you are crazy because you talk about OBE. This is a very open forum generally speaking. In fact there is a OBE section on this site. I personally have never had a OBE though I have never really tried either. It is something I do want to experience at some point. Please feel free to say what you mean. If you mean a OBE you do not have to say WILD. I think that will help with the confusion. Most experienced LD ers know the difference and I do think there is a difference. A OBE is definitely different from a WILD. I have had discussions with people who OBE it there are some definite differences.
I am curious when you refer to the void are you referring to the time before and after dreaming. Like if I were to do WILD and remain conscious between dreams. Is this what you mean by the void or are you talking about something completely different.
Clark Kent
BTW- Buddhism pre-dates Christianity.
Once in a dream I found myself floating in this black nothing, I was drowned by an incredible sensation of infinity. I could even hear or maybe feel a low drone(of empty, infinite space), which kind of passed through me, terryifing but awesome!
I couldn’t think or move, I just floated,paralyzed, for a while and woke up…
I can still savour the memory of feeling stranded in the middle of infinity… Being in the center of so much empty space. At the same time it was unsettling because this terrible sensation of being completely exposed washed constantly through me.
strange…