Intro, my experiences, my LD technique and some questions.

I’ve just found this site and thought I’d share my experiences with you. Apologies for the lenght of my post, but I hope it is of interest to some of you and I also have a couple of questions. I first found out about lucid dreaming from a white witch who introduced me to the ‘Western Way’ about 20 years ago. I’ve tried researching this on the ‘net since with very little luck. Essentially, it is a philosophy whereby one uses lucid dreaming to meet various archetypes to gain understanding of yourself from them. I tried ld’ing with little success until one night when I suddenly became lucid during a dream. I’d looked down at my clothes and saw I had my boxer shorts on outside my trousers. For a moment I was embarrassed, but quickly thought: “Why should I be bothered – it’s only a dream.” With that, everything became clear. I knew I was ld’ing and wanted to make the most of it, so I launched myself into the air and took off. I flew around a familiar-ish landscape – the dream had been set near my home town, and this is what I saw from the sky above. Soon I found myself flying toward a huge cliff face. I banked, but couldn’t avoid it. I woke with a thump, and went back to sleep.

At work a few hours later I started to feel dizzy and was sent home. I only just made it home as every time I looked sideways, my head went into a spin (not good when you’re driving!). Heartbeat was below 30 bpm and the doctor was called. Then hospital for blood tests, cardiogram, EEG, etc. No problem was diagnosed. Eventually I fully recovered after about 4 weeks. I never associated my illness with the dream until a couple of months later when reading a report by a 19thC writer who experienced a lucid dream himself, and subsequently had a slow pulse and dizziness.

QUESTION 1

Has anyone else experienced anything similar? I’ve read somewhere that if you astral body snaps back to your physical body too quickly, this can cause physical problems.

Over the next few years lucid dreams came occasionally and unintentionally. One early one in particular comes to mind – I slowly materialised inside a pub, and everyone stared at me as if they had seen a ghost!

With the advent of the Internet, my interest was sparked again. After a while, I came up with my own technique that I’d like to share.

  1. We need to lose consciousness of our physical bodies – I think this is common practice amongst ld’ers, but it is essential for my technique. I like exercise, such as bike riding, and find this helps when relaxing later. Controlled breathing is another well-known technique. Finally, make sure you are totally comfortable – I always ld in bed, usually lying on my back.

  2. Music and / or sounds can help but are not essential. I often listen to trance / chill music when I go to sleep to mask any external sounds that can wake you from an ld. Avoid music with vocals however, as this demands your attention. I’ve also tried BWG, and find it helps too – only problem is sleeping with headphones on.

  3. It’s also going to help if your mental state is relatively clear of any stress.

  4. Being tired! This can help so much. In my opinion, lucid dreaming and hallucinating are practically the same thing, and I’m sure everyone knows that sleep deprivation can cause hallucinations. I’m not suggesting you go that far – maybe just stay up a few hours past your bedtime. Your brain will be more receptive to entering the REM state with which ld’ing is associated (I think!).

  5. This is the real key. Close your eyes and look ahead of you. Imagine you are a lookout on a dark night, and it is imperative that you don’t miss anything that appears in the gloom. If you’re like me, you’ll probably be staring at a dark mess with a spattering of orange specks. It helps if you look upwards slightly, but not so much as it hurts – this is a common technique amongst hypnotists. Keep looking. You can think about anything you like, and indeed, this may have an effect on the content of your ld, but not necessarily so. Keep looking and don’t lose concentration on the scene ahead. If all is going to plan, you should gradually lose sense of your body. Next you may feel your eyes REM’ing. Now, the image in front of your eyes starts to shift subtly. Keep focusing on it. You’ll hopefully start to see vague moving geometric patterns appear that gradually become more and more distinct. These patterns are reminiscent of the peyote and mescal induced designs on Mexican rugs. If you start seeing tunnels, try and move toward and through them. You might start to hear rushing noises, or popping noises like a balloon being burst. This can be detrimental, as can anything that causes a shock, as it can wake you from your state. It’s also worth stating that if you get this far in one night, and then wake fully, it’s very hard to get back in the same night. After a while, the geometric tunnels start to turn into images – faces, places, anything really, which change rapidly. Then one image usually becomes persistent, usually starting in the middle of my vision, and then growing until it takes over my whole vision. And then I’m there. Totally lucid. I know with 100% certainty that it’s a dream and not reality, so I have no need for reality checks. The shock of lucidity is often just too exciting, and it wakes me up – this is the hardest thing for me to overcome, but if you can, the dream kind of stabilises and can last for ages. I’ve just read the FAQ, and it’s great to know that this is a common problem!! The location can be totally random, although it can be based on what I was thinking about when I start off. I estimate that it takes somewhere between 5 and 30 minutes to go lucid, and I probably have a 1 in 3 success rate, and probably attempt this 2 or 3 times a week.

  6. Ending a dream. Sometimes, I don’t remember how a dream ended. Other times, I can just command myself to either wake up or go to sleep. Fortunately, I’ve never had any problems since the first one.

I’ve had all sorts of experiences during ld’s. I usually don’t have total free will during dreams – some things I try just don’t happen. Mostly they just involve floating / flying around both strange and familiar landscapes. Large houses and parks often feature too. I’ve met many characters, although this does not happen that often, and my interaction with them extends from the mundane to the bizarre. I’ve had sex, although the first time I attempted this, I just tried to take the clothes of a young lady I encountered. She slapped me across the face and ran off! (I figured that people generally react in ld’s the same as they would in rl.) I also often find messages – say on the cover of a book or in a letter that I’ll find somewhere.

Another common type of LD I get is when I’m lying in my bed looking around my well lit bedroom, when in fact I know for certain that the light is out and my eyes are closed. These LD’s aren’t deliberate, and usually come in the morning. I’m always astounded that every detail of the room appears to be correct.

I don’t believe that there’s anything supernatural going on with lucid dreaming. I’ve heard stories about people meeting up, but not seen any convincing evidence, and I would have thought this would be easy to prove. I’m with James Randi on anything supernatural (see randi.org/research/index.html) - so if anyone can really prove shared dreams, then there’s $1M up for grabs.

QUESTION 2

If also just found out the the geometric patterns I described in 5 above are called phosphenes / entopics. This is something I’m fascinated in. Sometimes I can get locked into seeing these and not going into a dream. They get increasingly more complex and well defined, and I have a theory that what I am seeing is the inner workings of my brain. The reason I say this is that the patterns switch in time with my thoughts. If I hold a train of thought the patterns are consistent, however, if I think about something else the patterns change. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

very interesting stuff. for the first part, i dont feel dizzy after having a ld…and i couldnt answer the second one. hehe. i like your method. just one thing, do you wake up in the middle of hte night to do your method, or do you establish this right before you even fall asleep?

Hi speccyteccy ! Welcome on LD4all forum !

I’m sorry I can’t reply at your questions. I don’t believe that phosphenes shows the brain inner work, but it’s possible that neurons activation has an effect on them. I don’t think that there has been a lot of work about that…
Your method looks very similar to the WILD method, and part 5 is very interesting because it’s the most detailed description I’ve ever seen.
I’m also interested in the principle of using LD to meet archetypes. Did you have some success with it ? I tried once to meet my anima in a LD, and I had a strange dream which was perhaps early childhood memories.

Thanks for the welcome! Cool! It’s so nice to have found this forum - when I talk to other people about LD’s they think I’m some sort of nutter!

Normally I just do this when I go to bed. I’ve never woken myself deliberately to LD, but if I do wake in the middle of the night, LD’ing is often easier when I try.

I’ve just been reading about the methods fo LD’ing, and the description of WILD does seem to be closest to my method.

Unfortunately, I lost the books I had on the Western Way before I’d mastered LD’ing, so I never had success meeting archetypes. I have met many strange characters, and believe I’ve learnt some things about my inner self from them - but I guess those characters are just facets of myself anyway.

I’ve also been thinking more about the phosohenes, and I just want to get to the bottom of what they are. The patterns I see on occasion are so intricate and vivid and are definately synchronised with my thought patterns. In some ways they are like shoals of fish where each individual changes direction at almost the same time as the rest. I can change the patterns simply by thinking about something else, anything in fact, and I get a new pattern. One theory is that our brains are like computers in that they have a video RAM. As our eyes are shut when dreaming, there’s nothing to feed it, so perhaps the brain starts using it for another purpose, and this is what we see. Or perhaps, because our video RAM is blank, our brain points our ‘inner’ eye toward another area of ‘RAM’ - and its this area that’s responsible for generating the phosphenes we see.

I hope there’s someone out there who experiences the same detailed phosphenes (or should that be entropics - I don’t know the difference!) that are so much more than the geometric patterns I see when I put pressure on my closed eyes.

When I was 5 years old I had this happen:
Everynight for over a week I would lay down to sleep.
Right away I would start to clearly see these shapes. Square, Circle, triangle, cubes, balls…

They would be against a dark backgroung and spin, rotate.
I was used to always lucid dreaming when I was young, but this is all I would see for a week. It was uncontrolable. I cried because it was always the same, a true nightmare.
Like I discovered the truth about how it is possible to NOT be able to control your dreams.
I wanted the images to go away, I wanted to just dream like I always did, but no,
just those shapes and nothing else, rotating me, teasing me, I felt mentaly abused.
The week past and I began to dream again.
For a while I was afraid to go to sleep. The repetative shapes, and nothing else was the scariest thing I experienced in dreaming.

Another question about archetypes : are they jungian psychology archetypes ( anima, Old man, Mercurius, etc. ) or specific to the “Western Way” ? ( I don’t know what is the Western Way, indeed ).
There were two people in France who were interested in phosphenes : one of them, Dr Lefebure, founded a method called “phosphenism”, but I don’t believe it’s about phosphenes patterns. I was told that his followers sort of betray his method. I’ll try to find the site of the another one, but I don’t even remember his name :sad:

#Six - sorry that those images scared you when you were younger - for me they are beautiful!

Basilius - from what I remember, the archetypes were mostly those from Norse mythology, but included ones from many other cultures.

I’ve just found an interesting article about phosphenes:

lila.info/document_view.phtml?document_id=62

There are a few statements that I found particularly pertinent:

“Some researchers, like Heinrich Kluver, have suggested that the ‘’’‘geomerty’’’’ of hallucination actually reflects the neurological structure and processing functions of the brain”

“Some Western subjects go on to liken the lattice to multiple television screens. The images on these ‘’’‘screens’’’’ are the first spontaneously produced iconic hallucinations: they include ‘’’‘recognizable people and objects’’’’. Eventually, ‘’’‘more formed memory images’’’’ associated with powerful emotional experience overlay and replace the geometrics”

I found this site about phosphenes : it’s the content of a MA Dissertation about “Theory of Entoptic Phenomena”.
https://www.oubliette.zetnet.co.uk/Intro.html

EDIT : I read it yet and the third part only is closely related to phosphenes :
https://www.oubliette.zetnet.co.uk/Three.html
Other pages are related to paleolithic art.

Fascinating link. Thanks.

Archetypes in general can be found both in the West and the East. But their meaning is often very different. Jungians use archetypes as mythical forms of mental structures, or as the earliest forms of personal evolution. Dreams then use these archetypes as basis to fill in personal and cultural elements which then gives the dream its unique symbolism and interpretation. Thus, the origin of Jungian archetypes lies within the pre-personal domain, before a persona, a self consciousness has developped.
Plato and Plotinus however used different archetypes, namely trans-personal forms which only manifest after a whole prepersonal and personal evolution. In this sense, Platonian and Plotinian archetypes are the earliest forms of transpersonal involution.
Both archetypic systems, pre and trans, are often mixed up which resulted in a lot of confusion.

The East mainly uses trans-personal archetypes. For instance, the Tibetan Mahamudra tradition uses a wide variety of transpersonal archetypes (mainly forms of deities, dakinis and some others) which are absolutely not comparable with the mythical pre-personal archetypes from Jung or from for instance Greek and Nordic mythology.

Both archetypic systems are important but they should not be mixed, because both have specific features which are solely bound to the level of development where they belong, prepersonal or transpersonal.