LD vs. Dreaming: lower level?

Recently I had to find some hyperlinks on lucid dreaming, so I was looking through lots of Internet sites. Some of them were in the same stream that this forum. But some could be referred to LD thematic, but their main line were nagualism, shamanism and books by Castaneda. And while reading this stuff, I found sentences like “as I know from my own experience, dreaming without stalking is dangerous”, “sometimes such things can even happen with a beginner”. Or “it has nothing to do with miserable morning luciders”. Or “everything is in fact much more subtle than Laberge described”. (All the mistakes you found there are coming from my translation). So, I have a question: do techniques from these two traditions (Laberge and Castaneda) have something common? Do they intersect at any point, excepting the fact of recognizing a dream as a dream? Most of people here seem to have learned LDing according the books by Laberge and others from the same tradition. Did anyone compare these theories? I really don’t want to have anything with the teachings by Castaneda. So I am afraid, that if I practice usual “civilized” and “materialistic” lucid dreaming, I will still have all the bad consequences, which can follow shamanic techniques, just because I have read about them, and I will just go crazy… I WANT to be a “morning lucider”, miserable or not, and nothing more!

Everything only my personal opinion:

The technique in the Castaneda-Books is basically some form of MILD. It consists of two parts (although it is not explained like this in the book)

  1. You create a link “when I look at my hand, I might be be dreaming”
  2. You set an intention to look at your hand at night

The author of the Castaneda books certainly has some knowledge about drugs, shamanism and lucid dreaming. However, I highly doubt that a shaman called Don Juan exists. I don’t even think the author has met a shaman (at least not lived with him for a longer period of time). The books are a mixture of real knowledge (perhaps from anthropolgical reports) and fiction. The amount of fiction increases with the numbers of books he wrote.
It’s a good read with some interesting techniques, but most of the stuff he wrote about dangers is most probably just meant to make the book more interesting.
(Though I don’t want to say that there can’t be any dangers… but most probably not the way he describes them)

tapir

By adding in such a mystical element such as the ones you described, an author can higher the amount of books sold, and thus they make more money.

People who write, and only put in the scientific facts are actually less likely to sell more books (LaBerge seems to have broken this wall though, mainly due to his fame on the subject).

Dreaming is not dangerous - if it was, our bodies wouldn’t do it.

My advice to you… don’t worry about it.

I know Castaneda’s books. I learned LDing in them.

The only points that are the same in Laberge’s and Castaneda’s points of view are :

  • how to become lucid (DILD and WILD techniques);
  • in your first LDs, you are so excited that you wake up when you realize you’re dreaming;
  • looking at your hands as a prolongating technique.
    That’s all.

The principles diverge immediatly. For instance, Laberge’s technique implies to have a excellent dream recall. Details and dream diaries are considered as an obstacle in Castaneda’s teachings. Moreover, in Laberge’s point of view, all what you see is unreal (but he supposes that some dream actions could have a psychosomatic effect). Castaneda says you can meet other forms of consciousness in LD.

What is rather strange, and could seriously contradict Castaneda’s view, is that :

  • Eastern dream methods (dream yoga for instance) don’t emphasize about the so-called dangers of dreaming.
  • There are a lot of non-castanedian experienced dreamers and they are not crazy. :grin:

Anyhow, I just wanted to read Castaneda again and see where are the differences in his method and Laberge’s. Your post will be a good opportunity. I’m interested in the Castanedian links you found : but you said you translate the sentences. Were they in Russian ? ( I can’t read russian ) :sad:

Yeah, they were in Russian… :sad: I wouldn’t be able to read them if they were not. But I think there must be lots of such sites in all languages. Why must Russia be the most shamanic country? :grin:
I did not want to say that I believe in everything from Castaneda’s book… I don’t think he really jumped from a cliff and teleported somewhere halfway, and so on. The only thing I wanted to ask about, is that many people who read his books experience things which could happen with them if everything was true. If our dreams are only processes inside our brains (what I believe they are), they must be heavily affected with the books we read. I can be skeptical to the idea, that I can meet inorganic beings or that my gathering point will go away too far. But my subconscious will remember this stuff and create dreams from this material. I will see some sort of confirmation of rejected earlier ideas, and these confirmations will create a positive loop… And in the end I will behave as if I really had my gathering point moved… Or just jump from the cliff thinking I am cool enough to do it! :grin:

In my very first LDs, as I was influenced by Castaneda’s readings, I met a lot of “allies”. A friend of mine, a Castaneda’s reader too, met so much monsters in his dreams that he had to stop LD for 3 years : he was frightened.

After reading a lot of LDers posts, I wondered if it was a difference between these monsters I identified with “allies” (or “inorganic beeings”) and the monsters which could be found in a lot of dreams (aliens abductions, Old Hag, etc.) I came to this conclusion : what I saw in my LDs and dream common monsters were the same thing. Moreover, Florence Ghibellini said that dreamers used to meet such monsters when they begin to dream, but after a while, it was very difficult to experienced LDers (even quite impossible) to meet them again.

I think now that UFO believers meet aliens… and Castaneda believers meet allies. In the same time, my friend came by his own way to the same conclusion, and resume LDing without fear. As for me, I have no more “allies” dreams since I don’t believe monsters can harm me.

I have a few more comments, but it will make a long post. I’ll maybe post them another time. :grin:

Naturally! People who think they will meet aliens will meet aliens. People who think they will meet allies will meet allies. People expecting tigers will see tigers; people expecting zombies will see zombies; and people expecting gangsters will see gangsters. :grin:
All this depends on the gathering point. :tongue:
In fact, I’m posting not to write this… I have just found another pearl from a Russian dreamer. He is an Orthodox Christian and criticizes both castanedian and labergian traditions (in his opinion the difference is only in energetic levels). Here are some theses:

  1. If you don’t have enough energy of awareness, your physical energy will pour out of your body through the manipura center (I don’t know what it is), and you will get diseases of kidneys, bladder, intestines, liver, spleen… He knows it from his own experience! And if something is wrong with your pancreas or stomach, LDing is just deadly. :help:
  2. LDs can lead to schizophrenia.
  3. Why do you need to push out your astral body while you are alive and young? It is premature. You must prepare yourself for many years (35 at least) before you can began LDing. :eek:
  4. If you are an advanced dreamer, you can be caught by inorganic beings and die. Such thing happened with a famous yoga in Moscow.
  5. LDing is addictive. There is no difference between LDing and drugs.
  6. Early extending of your possibilities will make you proud and turn you off the right spiritual way.
  7. Even Castaneda, taught and led by a wise nagual, was several times in danger. What can be said about people repeating his practices alone or with ignorant theachers?
  8. Modern western propagandists are only making money. They don’t care about psychical and physical health of people.
    Hey, have I scared you to death yet? :devil: If I was a little bit more suggestible, I would have at least wetted myself while reading this stuff… And it would be repeated every time I think about LDs. In fact, I don’t need to believe this man. In the end, there are lots of people here, at this forum, who seem to be not schizophrenic… And if LDing led to physical illnesses, scientists would already have found it, because they sometimes find rather strange things… But who knows? Maybe, you just overcome intolerable pain in your LD-torn bodies to crawl to your computers and write in this forum how cool LDing is, because it is the only thing allowing you to forget about your gloomy schizophrenic lives. :bored:
    In any case, I will continue trying LDing. And if you don’t hear from me for a couple of months, know, that ilana aka tormoz died in and unsuccessful attempt to prove that LDing is not dangerous. :neutral:
    Happy dreaming! :demonic laughter: :peek:

Hi Ilana !
Is your secret goal to make the biggest collection of all the most stupid quotations about LD ? :wink:

The sentences you collected are “pearls” indeed (as you said). They are full of fear or of self-importance : that’s what I wanted to add to my last post.
One can’t say : “it has nothing to do with miserable morning luciders” without being self-important.
One can’t say : “LDing is just deadly” without being afraid of all.

I’ll destroy one by one the latest points you brought out. No pity with that crap.

=> “LD will pour out your energy through the manipura chakra” (navel chakra) : have a look on the brand new “Online chakra test” topic. Statistics show there is nothing wrong with the navel chakra of LDers.

=> “LD can lead to schizophrenia” : schizophrenia has nothing to do with manipura chakra. Moreover, scientific researches never have shown something like that.

=> “Why do you need to push out your astral body… etc” “If you are an advanced dreamer, you can be caught by inorganic beings and die. Such thing happened with a famous yoga in Moscow” : these sentences reveals a lot of confusion between LDing, astral projection, dreaming, yoga, etc. In my opinion, this confusion is voluntary. This guy mixes LDing, Castaneda tradition and yogi traditions in order to discredite them. Are we wondering why ?

=> “Early extending of your possibilities will make you proud and turn you off the right spiritual way”. OK : we found out why. What is the “right spiritual way” ? Probably his own way, that is to say the Christian way (in which LDing has no place). The only goal of this guy is to say that LDing has nothing to do with “spirituality”, and that if you follow the buddhist or hinduist or “toltec” tradition, you’re not on the “right spiritual way”.

And the last but not the least :
=> “LDing is addictive” : what a stupidity ! Everybody knows that LDing needs constant efforts and that it’s easier to stop LDing than to begin. After reading this sentence, I strongly wonder if this guy ever practise LD.
And if he did once, we can really doubt about his good-faith.

My feeling is that this Orthodox Christian doesn’t know anything about yoga (confusions about chakras, etc.) ; doesn’t know anything about LDing ; and just want to convert people to his point of view.

Why should we be scared by such stupidities ?
I’m interested in any points of view you could find in other LDing traditions (otherwise I wouldn’t reply to your posts ). But could you please bring out more convincing opinions if your want us to share your doubts. :tongue:

He writes he practices LDing a lot… But it was only a good clean prayer plus some daos meditations to save him from all these dangers. :wave:
To tell the truth, I think it is just a PR action to get rid of some competitors. :smile:

Ilana,

There is a main page whose name is “Sustained Action” about Castaneda.
https://www.sustainedaction.org/
Did you know it ?

It said it has nothing to do with Cleargreen (the commercial Castaneda’s and follower’s organization ).
It links with a lot of countries pages (Russian, Spanish, Italian, French, etc.). There are forums inside and I’ll try to find something interesting in it. :smile:

It would be great if some very experienced LDers could give their opinion about this topic (Jeff, Dm7, Holy Reality, Milod789, Monitor 199a, Mystic, etc. ). Do they see horrible demons everywhere ? Are they sick or insane ? Do they post from the net connexion of a psychiatric asylum ? :crazy: :partying_face: :rofl:
As for Pedro, he seems to have disappeared in the 8th dimension…

LD’ing is addictive? I wish it was :tongue:

About the dangers of LD’ing. How many posters on this forums wrote about negative effects LD’ing caused them? I remember one - the one with perfect dream recall, he became very attached to his dreams and depressed.
Of course, it’d be not good if we pretended that LD’ing is in no way dangerous, even if we knew otherwose [for encourage new LD’ers, for example]. But is it really dangerous? We need a proof, not something about “one yoga in Moscow”.

And I think that in the first place we should think about the dangers of LD’ing, basing on science. LaBerge did this, and he didn’t found anything. Other “dangers” aren’t even guesses, they’re just beliefs - as we can believe in demons or old hags instead of finding a real explanation :smile:

Edit: and if LD’ing is low level, what’s higher? OBEs? Levitation? Telekinesis? :wink:

Well, for example, staying aware 24 hours a day would be a higher level… :tongue:
My opinion is that LDing CAN be addictive and CAN lead to schizophrenia. But it is not the cause… Just a ground or something like that. Some people are just born to be addicted to something. There are so many addictive things in the world… Drugs, gambling, video games, TV series… They would get caught by any of these traps any way: it is just a feature of their brain. But they choose LDing: because it is much safer, much cheaper, it is legal and often takes no time, or just because it is becoming fashionable… Or just because they read a particular book in a particular moment of their life. The same thing with schizophrenic behavior… Probably, if someone counts percentage, he could find (though no one found anything like this yet :smile: ) that many LDers are schizophrenic and many schizos practice LDing… But they practice LDing because they are schizos, not the opposite. For example, some castanedians… I don’t say that the books by Castaneda lie, but if they are true, just think, that it took several years for CC himself to believe in things he had taken part in. What can be said about a person, who has read several books (took from the section of philosophy, not esoteric, by the way) and says: “Wow, I want to take my physical body to the world of allies, too! Maybe, I’ll try and look at my hands next dream?” I don’t want to say all “toltec” people think this way, but those, who do (and they exist, as I can see), they must be not quite normal from very beginning…

If believing in what you have read in a book is a symptom of schizophrenia, then the whole alphabetized part of humankind is schizophrenic.
And the other part believes those who have read the books… :happy:

In my opinion, that’s almost right indeed. I think that the whole humankind is paranoid (and not schizophrenic).

So, I think that a person, who has read Castaneda’s book, and believe he can meet allies, is normal. You can find a lot of similar behaviors in “normal” people, if you look juts a bit around you (and in yourself too). Beliefs (and particularly irrational beliefs) are the intellectual food of humankind.

I think Ilana meant : is LD a lower level of “toltec” dreaming ?

Everything we know is a myth. No one of us have seen electrons… Let alone neutrinos. :grin: We believe in them because we read about this stuff or heard people telling us the stuff they had read about. In the end of this chain we will only find someone who thought out electrons, because it was a handy myth to explain something which he though he saw.
But on my opinion, reading a book is not enough to believe in some particular things… Maybe, for an open-minded person teleportation is not less possible than electrons. :hmmm: But I am not so free of my myths…
So, I think, any Castaneda’s practices don’t threat me personally. My assemblage point is pinned to my standard schizophrenic/paranoid/whatever position so firmly that I won’t be able to become more bizarre even if I want to. :grin: But what I really meant and, I hope, will be able to formulate now, is a question if it is really possible for a person practicing dreaming without real belief in the whole toltec theory.
Every practical system (dreaming/stalking, yoga, physical training lessons, studying languages, any one) consists of two connected parts: exercises and theory, explaining, why these particular exercises can make you reach this particular result. Result itself is a part of theory, not practice. For example, bodybuilding:
physical exercises + (optional)physical theory = > physical result. You will get the result even if you don’t know why and what this result must be (some slower, maybe, but it will be almost the same). But if you take yoga, the formula will be different (I don’t know much about yoga, sorry if I say something wrong):
physical exercises + (necessary) spiritual theory = > mental result.
I could say “spiritual result”, but that’s not what I want to say. Something happens in your brain because you know it is going to happen. In Soviet time, many people practiced simplified yoga: pure physical exercises without theory. Naturally, none of them reached some transcendental heights. They just had not expected it. They got only physical results: better health and so on.
But what about toltec stuff? It doesn’t suit first two formulas, because most of exercises are mental, too. Imagine a person with more self-control than me, interested in LDing. This person will find a book about dreaming, with many useful practices, which are said to help with lucid dreaming. If he/she does all this stuff without believing in allies and everything, but just having read about it, - will he meet allies?

[EDIT]By the way, about schizos… This morning I had a dream where I knew I was dreaming and everything I saw was a dream, and I thought everything I saw was real and explaining my previous dream - at one and the same time!
If it is not a schizophrenic thought, I don’t know what schizophrenic thoughts are.[/EDIT]

I went on the french Sustained Reaction forum : there were on it about 10 regular members, all low level lucid dreamers. Lucid dreamers because what they describe is just lucid dream. Low level, because they are scared when they see phosphenes. :grin: And of course, when they have vibrations, they all think they will die. :rofl:

But… but… there was also a woman called Claire :wiske: , who seemed to be, at first sight, very experienced. She posted in a very assertive way about dreaming, and when someone told about LD, said that LDs had nothing to do with what she called “second attention dreams”. And she said that Florence Ghibellini (probably, the most experienced LDer in France) wasn’t aware about this difference. :eh:

When I searched more in her posts, I was very surprised that I couldn’t find anything in them about this so-called “second attention dreams”, and also concerning the “famous” difference between those and LD’s. Was this point such a secret ? I began to find this very strange, because there are no secrets in Castaneda teachings.

Then I began to notice that some other members, who were in complete agreement with her, used the same writing style than Claire (it is very noticable, cause it’s pompous). Eventually, I found a thread where some members clearly said that Claire, Archangette, Sol de Sol, etc… were the same person ! :happy:

I found this case definately interesting and keep investigating about these nicknames… and after some “googling”, I found that the person who pretends to be Claire, is a man teaching Tensegrity in Paris. :eek:

What he does is not illegal stuff, but if there are, on each Castanedian forum, such people who spread false information in order to conduce LD beginners to participate to Tensegrity workshops (not really free :wink:), you can seriously doubt of the accuracy of information found on these forums.

Anyhow, I’ll carry on with my investigations on the english Sustained Reaction forum.

:lol: They are also bad stalkers if it is so easy to find out who they are!

What about asking them their opinion about the difference between “dreaming” and LD ? Isn’t it a GREAT idea ? :cool_laugh: :tongue:
I’m asking on the english and french forums. My questions will be : “Is there a difference ? What is it ? I know how to LD, but what have I to do in order to “dream” ?”
Could you ask the russian forum, Ilana ? Then we can compare the answers ! :grin:

On the french and english Sustained Reaction forums, I just got three (and quite contradictory) answers. I won’t emphatize about the contradicting side. The answers agree about the point that the main difference between LD and Dreaming consists in dream stability and dream-attention (second attention).

They thought that what defines Dreaming is that you use the Castaneda’s method of stabilizing a dream :

One people thought that the Dream-attention is the thing looking through short glances at everything within a dream, so in his opinion it makes a big difference between LD and Dreaming, cause in LD, you don’t use the Dream-attention. :eek:

Everybody thought that in order to set up Dreaming, you have to improve your second-attention through the warrior behavior. Moreover, the so-called Claire said that in order to dream, you have to build your dream-body through contemplating (?) objects IRL. Only Claire pretended to have results.
IMO, all this is not very convincing… :eh:

I didn’t ask anything on alt.dreams.castaneda, because they talk about all but dreams ! :smile: