You may find out that the entire apparatus, your circulatory system is actually an open system and is only part of a more extensive process and movement in the Universe. The moment you discover that you are continually conditioning the movement of your bloodstream and that you are the one driving the heart muscle, that moment, you will be the one shining with the light of stars. Influencing the beat of your heart muscle is no less impressive than arousing the impact of a volcano or affecting the trajectory of Jupiter. Some young minds may ask how the problem is solved if two Aspirants want an opposite trajectory for the same thing, but our answer is very simple. There is only one trajectory and one choice only. Since it is the only one, it can be neither free nor unfree because we cannot have a fulcrum to compare these two meaningless things. All the trouble in our art comes from a simple fact that we really cannot understand a very simple thing – everything that exists is within the mind. In fact, there is no such thing as everything. Moreover, everything that exists is a wholly exaggerated notion. Nothing exists – is quite more appropriate. Except for the mind. Not yours or mine, greater, wider, or more intuitive. But one, and only. Nothing and except the mind are so diametrically different things and identical at the same time. And that is exactly all we have to deal with in this quest of ours. There is the mind, but nothing beyond that. Right now, even these words you are reading are not in front of you as you may think, but inside your mind. You are not looking at them; you are looking directly inside yourself, in the part of the brain that is seeding this projection as a visual image, which is purely and solely constructed by you. These are not letters at all; they are particles of your mind.
One great man said that each of us has their fifteen minutes of glory. Perhaps it is fair to say that all this we are going to talk about is beautiful and, above all, different way in which you can utilize those fifteen minutes. We live in the belief that our time lasts, has passed, or will pass, and accordingly, we measure our spiritual progress by time, not by the quality of what we may have experienced during just one second of our meditation. A simple calculation leads us to the startling fact that we spend a third of our lives sleeping and just a small part of it dreaming. In fact, an average 30-year-old is only aware of twenty years of his life. Therefore, the difference in beginners’ and masters’ spiritual work lies in the exploitation of that part of our life, which is unconscious, the same for everybody, and unfortunately, too often irrelevant to everyone. Without the attainment of the experience called astral projection, or lucid dreaming, all the systems of esoteric thought are just an empty story. An average dream lasts for 15 minutes. The striking thing is that a man can do anything in those 15 minutes of glory. The crucial question is, what are we going to do with all this? How can we use that? This is a story different from anything you can imagine. Dare to reach the goal. Moreover, dare to use the means.
SLEEPING SELF
There is an experience that completely changes the content of our being and transforms it into a force we cannot even assume to exist. If we start heating water, it will start to change, but that change will not be so significant for our soul until it exceeds 99 degrees centigrade. Degree by degree, that growth will not mean much in the quality of the water itself, and yet, when it exceeds 99 degrees and reaches 100, that one small degree will mean much more than the growth of all the previous degrees. That one degree will change everything – water will boil. By raising the same quantitative unit, as was the change from, for instance, 10 to 11 degrees, now, that same unit makes water change its nature in such a noticeable and unique way. Boiling is the growth of water, both quantitative and qualitative. The experience of lucid dreaming is that qualitative change in the Aspirant. And just as it can change quantitatively over the years, growing from one degree to another, that quantitative growth will bring nothing so tremendous. However, finding yourself in a dream, experiencing a whole new awareness of a whole new reality, seems to bring a qualitative change in the mind, which will affect the Aspirant’s being for the rest of his life. This qualitative leap will direct us to a completely different quest; the search for ourselves. Yet, the search in the right direction is the search in the least likely place to look for – inside the Self.
For sure, the first important step in this matter is a complete understanding of the architecture and anatomy of a dream. It can be said that our shallow perception of what sleeping and dreaming are, and the equation between these two completely different phenomena in general, is the condition of failure. We have high expectations to understand our own reality of being awake without even the slightest awareness of what is happening behind our own eyes.
Our whole being contains a system of levers of the highest enlightenment that could be found in the symbiosis of biological, physiological, chemical, and psychological processes in us that lie primarily in straightforward laws and ways in which these processes make what we call consciousness. All our trouble is that with the occult arts, we try bypassing something that is an entirely open channel in itself. It has taken so much time during which we have been really unable to say what is going on in our brains during quite ordinary things; apart from being able to perceive certain reactions, we are unable to answer how and why processes occur within the mind, and how certain information is processed and stored. One of such levers that we now know quite a lot about compared to only a few decades ago is our dreaming, that is, a period of brain activity called the REM phase or paradoxical sleep. And the more we know and learn, the less willing we are to utilize such knowledge for all that holds our art in the sphere of life’s interest — and that is the progress and illumination of being. We keep shedding light upon other paths, plains, and entities so much that we are not sure at all that they are anything beyond our own imagination and weakness. We forget that all the light is already inside ourselves, on and warm, but our eyes are focused on other and further heavens, and not those that have already been radiating and longing for that distant and vain look.
We will start from the very basic settings that emerged by complete coincidence: polygraph recording of the waking-sleeping cycle using electrodes implanted at the level of major brain structures and different muscle groups allowed two different states to be accidentally discovered (quite diametrical, to be more precise). One is a state of slow-wave sleep, followed by slow waves with large amplitude and preserved muscle tone. And the second is a state of deep sleep, which, paradoxically, is characterized by electrical activity of the brain, similar to that in the waking state, rapid eye movements, and complete absence of muscle tone. These are periods that were discovered in 1959 by my friend and researcher in the same field of interest – Professor Michel Jouvet and named paradoxical sleep – a name that properly indicates the nature of this condition. Anatomically, the waking system consists of a network of neurons, which stimulate the cortex through certain neurotransmitters during the waking state. In other words, we artificially maintain wakefulness, with the natural state of our brain being anything but that waking state for which we need constant neurological stimulation and effort to maintain. Our natural environment is the unreality of dreams, while this reality keeps being artificially caused throughout our lives. Everything takes place in such a way that numerous control mechanisms prevent the occurrence of paradoxical sleep, i.e., dreaming during the waking state and at the beginning of sleep, so paradoxical sleep can occur only if all activities of the structures in charge of stimulating wakefulness are stopped. Dreaming is accompanied by a significantly elevated alert threshold and almost complete paralysis. A deaf, blind and paralyzed being becomes very vulnerable; it can only dream if it is safe. Only then does it fall into deep sleep, which is a mechanism that manifests itself in our brain from the beginning of time. The direct transition from waking to paradoxical sleep is possible only with one illness – narcolepsy. The main feature of paradoxical sleep is atony of body position and rapid eye movements. It took too long for even the most suspicious to be convinced that onyric activity is not a continuous process during sleep but a completely periodic occurrence of paradoxical sleep. Neurophysiological experiments have clearly shown that paradoxical sleep is a state different from sleeping, with a significantly higher threshold of wakefulness than could even be assumed. Lucid dreaming occurs during paradoxical sleep, where the awareness that we are actually dreaming correlates with the high threshold of wakefulness that the state of dreaming has, but which we are unfortunately not aware of. It took a short time to get proof that lucid dreaming occurs only during paradoxical sleep, thanks to Dr. Stephen LaBerge and his experiments. The nature of dreaming is indeed completely paradoxical. Within that period and that reality, we have an utterly increased wakefulness, with our body being turned off. On the other hand, what is turned on is a world for which, in addition to all this wakefulness, we cannot recognize that it is unreal. We bring our own qualities and characters into that unreality by living it and acting in it like in this reality. We are so awake during the dreaming period that we are not even aware that we are dreaming. This is the true nature of this condition, which got named paradoxical sleep or paradoxical state of the brain long before it was called the REM phase. Indeed, dreaming is set as the third state of the brain, as different from sleep as sleep is different from the waking state, and all our efforts must aim in this direction at any cost. The nature of dreaming is paradoxical, and we must understand these heavens as a pond full of wild fish; we have to cultivate that pond down here, instead of looking up at those heavens as the worst failure of all Aspirants for centuries – in an attempt at something so paradoxical as achieving awakening of our being during wakefulness. Therefore, we will crush the paradox of dream with convenient meaningless methods, which are primarily simple and short. In a lucid dream, each attempt lasting more than a few minutes will be doomed to complete failure; such an act will either melt into insomnia or lead to complete awakening. There is nothing worse than finding that we have failed to implement any of that lucidity one morning, yet being overwhelmed by the excessive longing for a lucid dream and that our unconscious nature has managed to find a way to slip off the hook in the same way, imperceptibly, inconspicuously and skillfully, while it seems we have been waiting all the time in that pond for a fish with a rod without bait.
What is truly lucid in that morning is a very special neurosis that arises from the fact that we did achieve nothing, that is, the unrealistic belief that we actually did anything. It is lucid to know that the amount of work and effort is entirely and diametrically different from the success rate. The Aspirant may think that the more he works during the night, the greater are chances of finding himself in the magnificent astral realm, and it is in that lucid humor that his mind prepares, with the first rays of the sun, when he has been exhausted by hours of ultimately unsuccessful attempts. He realizes he has been fishing in a completely wrong place, with a completely wrong bait, and a wholly broken net. Everything is lucid, but his dreaming and that beautiful astral realm now seem to laugh and grin in his face, leaving him to all the beauties of the coming day to think and drown in his own failure. What I want from now on is to stop using terms such as astral projection or out-of-body experience; once you have pulled out at least a hundred lucid dreams, you will know for sure why. In such a pompous term as astral projection or the projection of the body of light, the only thing of all these pompous words that would really be worth underlining is light. But by no means stellar and distant light, unattainable and romantic. These are all metaphors of the same dark shadow that envelops human experience, interwoven with fear and misunderstanding of a completely natural phenomenon. The whole concept of getting out of the body is so meaningless for everyone once they have found themselves in a lucid dream and when they feel that fantastic, magical, and unique atmosphere of a conscious dream. All I have ever been convinced of after countless thousands of projections so far is that it is not about getting out of the body; in fact, it is not about the body at all. Everything is inside the mind. We simply have nothing to look for beyond that in this place, but it is our own curse that by the mind, we mean a very small and hidden place. There is an entirely fantastic game of the mind that finds plasticine to imprint its own will while transiting to sleep. This is one of the true tasks we have before us, and before which we will by no means back off – to discover the trajectory of the soul inside this labyrinth, and instead of finding a way out, we actually find the soul.
Lucid dreaming is gain, not a gift; it is an ability, not an anomaly. It is the exploitation of a completely natural process; it is the ultimate economy of the movement of the spirit like a sail on a ship; ignorance of this indicates ignorance of the natural processes that take place within us. Therefore, all elements of this skill are absolutely opposed to ideas such as exercise, effort, or erudition.
The effort to practice this skill is an entirely ridiculous thought that is identical to the thought that you should practice pumping your own heart or that you should practice breathing, and continually reminding yourself of the importance of these movements your own life depends on. In fact, you are not the one beating your heart; you are not the one breathing. Your automatic organism breathes, and that has nothing to do with you. All the concentration is actually messing and poking your nose into the work of your accountant, which, sooner or later, leads to misunderstanding and failure, above all. Your heart and your lungs keep on doing their job. All the time you are neurotically trying to learn and pass on all this clumsiness to others, who, again, stumble upon all this, who breathe just like you and whose heart works in exactly the same way as yours. All our failure in this matter lies in the fact that we really have no knowledge of the two processes – the process of awakeness and the process of dreaming. In fact, we are furthest from realizing that there is no difference between these two events, which is actually just one. We are awake all the time. Indeed, how can we expect to know what a lucid dream is if we are not sure what awakeness is? Is it worth finding the mechanism of dreaming while we are not certain of our awake state and if we are not familiar with our own wake capabilities? How to expect to be lucid in a reality where we have not fully awakened yet?
These words are so important to begin with, and there is no movement that introduces the Aspirant more to the heavens of success in understanding one’s own awakeness than it is in understanding one’s own dream. In order to move forward, we must make a very clear distinction between consciousness and awareness. Consciousness is the object of awareness. Awareness is the subject of consciousness. All we are going to talk about here is how to get to completely different shores of awakeness, where we will find awareness. This sailing on the currents of our sleeping self requires us to really discern what happens when we fall asleep. To truly see, we shall close our eyes.
Each method is an agreed system of values that can logically fit into a particular attainment model. But this does not mean that this model contains that value exclusively because, in fact, for a free spirit, any method leads to any attainment. No matter what method, no matter what attainment. If you want to link two dots, you will not draw a line from the center; that would be terribly inappropriate. You will start either from one dot or the other; when these points are clearly defined, the line is obvious. However, the line itself is composed of a multitude of dots and is an entirely new attainment per se. It is by no means a method or a consequence of merging these dots; on the contrary, these dots are only a limited end of that line that connects them only with a limited value. Then, when a line connects them, these dots are no longer perceived; everything becomes just one line, that is, one attainment, where the one who attains is no more, as well as the one to attain to, nor any tools of attainment. Therefore, why would exercise in lucid dreaming have anything to do with attaining the lucid dream? Statistically, out of a thousand lines drawn randomly on paper, one will most likely connect those two selected dots. The problem is that the rough awareness at that moment implies and creates a model that these dots and that line are products of the will to merge them and that the intention is responsible for everything.
Practicing lucid dreaming does not contribute to attaining the lucid dream. Practicing lucid dreaming leads to lucid dreaming practice, is not that so logical? The more you practice, the more distance there is from the attainment itself. In other words, the more you practice, the harder it is to attain. The problem with most Aspirants is completely misstructured work. I am sure the best book on lucid dreaming would be the one about failures. No technique or method in our art is so misunderstood and misinterpreted as lucid dreaming, precisely because the whole approach is completely wrong and based on a completely broken mechanism. Once you learn to do the whole thing correctly, you will notice the devastating fact that most books are actually rewriting one and the same fantasy and that the vast majority is a completely magnificent lie that is no different from a fish story. The methods are completely wrong, and the tale of astral planes, beings, and the silver cord is usually an accurate indication that there is a liar and a fraudster in front of you.
It really does not take a lot of energy or time to get to a lucid dream. You should only learn to do a very simple and right thing at the right time. A dream is so much more a sublime place than elemental beings, angels, silver cords, the benevolent deceased who want to drink just another cup of tea with us. It is the place of your mind, so wider than all this. All the magnitude of the dream, that is, the astral plane, is exclusively in the phenomenon of consciousness, the phenomenon of time which is expanded by this experience and transformed into a completely different value. The way you will really use this holy moment is solely up to you; we are here to consider and attain it in an easy and natural way above all. By no means is it crucial to have a separate and accidental lucid dreaming or to get a lucid dream in the lottery. The jewel of true attainment is reflected in the awakening and development of a lucid consciousness, which, like any scientific method, will be able to be carried out under certain circumstances in precisely the same way, which we can prepare, repeat and modify at will.
Therefore, I will instruct you as I have instructed others so far, and I can offer you a bunch of examples where inexperienced minds have achieved lucid dreaming after the first or first few attempts. What still makes them good practitioners today is the fact that they have set a healthy model of their practice, which does not require too much time, or tedious and unnecessary activities such as visualization, working with the middle pillar, countless meditation and concentration techniques; it can all rather help you in the second part of our work when you need to persevere and stay conscious in your dream. Once you have had your first experience of lucid dreaming, just remembering that wonderful act will help you easily experience the second one, soon carrying on in a certain rhythm, making it a part of your life, not practice. You must live a lucid awareness, do not expect it humbly, hoping for something that your nature has already achieved and brought into your life – every night, every day, throughout the whole of your existence.
It is one thing to wake up in your dream. It is yet another to keep yourself awake in your dream. Actually, the latter is much harder, but I want all your attention on the former for now. The experience of lucid dreaming is primarily conditioned by the economics of your movements. Life leads us to the fact that man is cursed by the desire to complicate simple things to the maximum. Lucid dreaming is an excellent example of such a cursed practice. Let us, therefore, define the strengths and weaknesses of this plan. The strengths are undoubtedly descriptions and transmissions of other people’s experiences, techniques, and observations, as long as they do not get into the field of theology, ideology, and sociology. It is actually essential for you to understand vividly that others are following the same goal and sharing the same mistakes with you. There is no better psychoanalysis than reading other people’s dreams. But since reading other people’s dreams is a luxury for you, for now, you will limit yourself to reading your own. Weaknesses are books; there is nothing so devastating as following instructions that lead to nothing, entire generations in this art endeavor to devote themselves to projections at bedtime, which is similar to making love without a male erection; it’s not that it’s impossible, but why on earth, when the whole mechanism is made to run smoothly when used differently.
To start with, the most important thing by far is to decide to succeed. Not to try or to keep trying, not to work on, but to complete and succeed. I want to start with the first point of your work, that is, the question of motive. It is an essential issue of all workings; it is a condition and the least common denominator of all progress and success. It is that atom of life, without which no action has any meaning. The question of motive is an essential issue for every act, from criminal to divine, and if you find a motive within a seemingly impossible endeavor, the whole act begins to radiate in such a different and lively atmosphere. But the question is how to find a motive for an experience that is so inconceivable and amazing? This incredibleness creates a drive within that pushes us forward, but at the same time, it radiates a completely dark and demoralizing shadow, the one that tells us that all this is possible for all but us, that of all God’s creatures, we are the only ones who are doomed to fail. Imagine the realization of children’s dreams, flying over buildings in the neighborhood or under the rainbow, imagine a sudden ascent to the clouds, a chase over the ocean. Imagine sitting in the clouds or peacefully floating in open space, getting to know your past life, metamorphosing into an animal, or some completely different form. To build such an appropriate motive, you do not need anything new; you just need to become a child. Again. But in your case, you have to work hard for it; your censor of reality will ruin your motive because it is but a stranger in your mind at the moment, and it will do everything to suppress and remove it. To prevent this, you need something concrete. You need a confirmation that you have set off on a journey. You need something tangible, something that will send a signal to your enthusiasm to grow and develop freely.
DREAM DIARY
Therefore, the beginning of work should be officially announced. For the first time, a small group of citizens will appear in the world of tyrants and will start organizing a rebellion. It must never perform too loudly because such a rebellion will be revealed and suppressed ruthlessly. Also, it should not be too quiet because it will induce no effect. What is required of you is to cause the butterfly effect. Therefore, the best way to start this great adventure is by keeping the diary of your dreams – your lucid diary. That diary is already one huge step towards your first lucid dream. Choosing a notebook in a bookstore, finding the ideal color and size, your first entry on its pages, all of these represent a conscious determination to succeed; it is a one-way ticket to a country where no one has been before, with you as the first one to arrive. This is a very important moment because it represents the withdrawal of the most important factor – the magical link. When you pick a day to buy your lucid diary, it will also be the first day of your entire lucid opus. I advise you to get a notebook of the usual size, without excessive patterns or tables for dates and times. Your diary will be a report on your inspiration and imagination, so it may be full of drawings and patterns that will require a lot of blank space on the paper. It will be your reconnaissance squad, not your gravestone epitaph; it must point to the vitality of your spirit, not to the passive darkness of oblivion and nothingness. Choose it well; work on this whole thing. You will see later that all the effort you put in the beginning will certainly affect many things later. I would not like to spend too much time on the form and appearance of the diary; I am quite sure that you will find what is ideal for you. What I want to dwell on, however, are two things – a record form and a form of interest. Let me go over the details of these ideas. At the same time, you will be more and more dedicated to your lucid opus and closer to the goal, just because your attention is sharpening more in this place, which I think is very good. Here I would like to tell you about what I have already said in the book about the Probationer, and it concerns the whole of this thing.
A note in this diary does not serve to admire your phantasmagorias but dissects them, measures them, and probes them with the flame of childish intrigue. There are countless models upon which the dreams are correctly recorded, and it is up to you to construct the one that suits you the most. When you record a dream, it is important to write it down immediately upon waking, no matter how convinced you are that you will remember it later. There is no need to wait for an ideal moment to write down a dream, but it should immediately be followed by awakening. More than an authentic experience in the morning will become distant and pale as soon as noon. It is also crucial that you give your dream a name. As if it were a movie, try to provide the best name to your last night’s blockbuster. Furthermore, find the symbol around which the dream is revolving. It is usually an object or a person around which the whole dream happens – try to discover and name what that is. Your subconscious uses sleep as we use adjectives in order to describe a specific noun; a dream for your unconscious nature is what a delightful verse is to a poet. Therefore, you need to find what is being adorned by that strophe, what is behind the stylistic figure of your subconscious, what kind of phenomenon has turned on the mischief behind your closed eyes. Is it a person who exists in real life, maybe someone from the past? Is it an object, or perhaps an event, emotion, or thought? In any case, it must be one term, not two or three, not more or less, but one and only. Come closer to that term from the state of wakefulness. What does it bring when you think about it? Is it pleasure or discomfort, fear or ignorance, lust, or need? Get out of the role of a dreamer; you need to transform the dream into a creative force of your intent, not to remain a passive and random cobweb of your unconscious. You have to allow a diary to breathe and develop; you must never be satisfied with one form of recording because inevitably, there will appear another one to replace it. Write in the third person. When you make a journal entry, do so as if you are writing about someone else, as if you are writing a biography. Then, write in the second person. Write to him instead of yourself. Give your dream logical legitimacy. List the actors of the dream. Give a title to your role, whether you were the main subject, an observer, helper, victim, savior, or conspirator. Are you a judge, prosecutor, or defense attorney? Who are you in the dream anyway, and to whom? Maybe you are an object of someone else’s dream, just a secondary object of a wider event? Maybe you are a stimulus to someone else’s awakening?
In the beginning, you will be lucky if you have written anything down at all. At first, your dream memory will be fragmentary, connected in small pieces that will progress over time. What you have to exercise here is patience. And most of all, the totality of memory; by no means fragments, you need continuity in memory, even if it is for just over a moment – if it is in one cycle and made of one uninterrupted part, it will be a hundred times more important than the one from several smaller wholes. Even a few minutes of uninterrupted memory is much more valuable than an experience of a whole night full of holes and darkness of oblivion.
All this, even reading this before writing down anything in your dream diary, crushes a possibility of failure so powerfully that we can say quite openly that it is already approaching the dawn of awakening. Not in reality, but in a dream, in an environment that is much more adapted to your true being and a landscape that is intended for such an endeavor, where your Self and your new awakeness will be in its completely natural environment.
DREAM ARCHITECTURE
The next, extremely important thing is an insight into the architecture of sleeping similar to a municipal court building – it has completely unimportant floors of bureaucracy where you can be stuck for years; offices, basements, completely different buildings that are all called the same and too often with the same addresses. But they all always have one door and one room where you get all things done, from building permits to utility affairs. And it all usually comes at a price, as does our special room for success. And that price is knowledge, not what the bribe is, but to whom and how much you should give to get your stuff done. In other words, we need to know precisely what you are doing in your sleep, when you are sleeping, when you are dreaming, and when do you wake up; it is so necessary for us to find that one single door.
What is absolutely necessary is to understand that sleep does not have a homogeneous structure. It is a shift between two completely different states, which are distant from each other, almost as the waking state is distant from the darkness of deep and unconscious sleep. Our ultimate goal is certainly paradoxical sleep, that is, the REM phase – the name more widely accepted, although a case of misnaming to some extent. As the nature of such a state is truly paradoxical, I will use that term as well. There is nothing more magnificent than understanding the nature of that wonderful state of dreaming, which unlocks the depths of our being. The moment we are close to the tallest heights, we are completely stuck in the depths and darkness of unconsciousness; it is paradoxical that we touch God facing him with our backs. It is as if some tremendous force has left the gates of paradise open in human life but has tried to hide the path to that gate, to conceal this state, and drive it away from any conscious possibility of cognition. It is as if divine providence had hidden the best possible gift to its stellar child while forgetting where it had hidden it. That hiding is just a correct expression and reason for this whole paradoxical movement. In primordial times, man was most vulnerable while sleeping, so the reactive mind did everything to enable self-defense systems, making dreaming possible only when multiple protection structures were set. It took care of human sleeping consciousness for a long time, precisely because it wanted to make sure that the perfect place was found where the body would not be disturbed by predators, and only after some time actuate the process of dreaming together with another, the last system of self-defense – paralysis. Even today, we are left with these ancient mechanisms in a completely similar way – during the REM phase, there is atony with the body of an individual being paralyzed from the neck down – leaving only the basic survival mechanism to work; it can be said that the organism is paralyzed – during a brief appearance of the most vulnerable part of its existence – dreaming, i.e., a paradoxical state. And just then, the being chooses to pretend to be something predators usually avoid – a still dead corpse, and fearing infection; they give up eating or attacking such a body. An old saying that instructs a man to pretend to be dead and lay low if he encounters a beast casts a whole and true meaning upon this story. And just when the reactive mind has become convinced that a safe place was found, out of the reach of predators, after switching on the ultimate line of defense and deception in the form of paralysis of the body, it enters its actual state and ambiance of that same mind – a paradoxical dream of eating if hungry and being taken care of if it has any need. It flows from one reality to another, and like in a dream of Zhuang Zhou – one really cannot say which is real and which is unreal, as long as the mind is found in a certain reality, it is really not aware of the illusion which it is in. Except in one single case – when a lucid dream is being accomplished. It is an anomaly – a virus that attacks a reactive organism inherited for thousands of years; it is a shortcut that activates a new program inside a program that is of higher priority and over which the main program has no control or possibility of restriction. Its appearance is more magnificent precisely because it uses the resources of the parent program, together with the chief architect, it builds and helps build every corner of the prison for one reason only – to design a perfect escape plan. It has kept building that prison all its life and all the lives of all the generations who have walked the earth, and it has left an escape plan for each of them, in a straightforward way for every individual to use it. Yet that same architect, the reactive mind, also has its trump card; by perfecting prison, it has perfected another element of our being – and that is the Ego, which, for all its complexity, cannot comprehend the simplicity of the escape plan that our being has left to ourselves. And we really can’t help but marvel at the fantastic extent to which a human being has complicated such a simple endeavor as lucid dreaming – from the wrong names of states, the wrong names of phenomena, the wrong methods, and the utterly wrong strategy; not only that we can no longer decipher the only map and plan of escape from the prison that we have made ourselves, but we also found a way to become satisfied in that same prison and, after all, completely unwilling to leave it at all. These two opponents – each in their own fantastic way – the reactive mind as a shadow, and the Selfness in the dream take on epic roles, and each uses the mechanisms through which they act in every aspect of a lucid dream, for which there will be some room to present later on.
As we have already said quite clearly, our sleep consists of two different states – sleeping and dreaming, where dreaming is cushioned in periods of complete unconsciousness which serves no purpose at first glance – and is referred to as the nREM phase. The whole misfortune is that it is the reactive mind that takes up the first 90 minutes of the nREM phase after we have fallen asleep. In fact, dreams do not start immediately, but only when this ancient mechanism has been really convinced that we will not be disturbed. And in those 90 minutes, while descending deeper and more confidently into the pits of unconsciousness, we are entirely left without any chance to take a part of ourselves into that world that we will build after those 90 minutes. Entering the dream, we enter it completely deprived of Self, carrying with us only unconscious and basic needs and fears, neuroses, and phantasmagorias. And just when the brain nests inside the dormant realm, it comes out of it and becomes unconscious again for 90 minutes, after which it enters the same mechanism of dream and comatose creativity just to be again obscured by the darkness of the previous nREM phase and prevented from realizing it is dreaming, during 15 minutes of paradoxical sleep. It is as if this game of light and shadow of the mind is an utterly offensive joke, in which a child who is mocked does not even understand how mean and corrupt the game of their friends is. If we compare the change of these two states with the correlation of brain activity, we get approximately the following plan of human dreaming:
As can be seen, paradoxical sleep lasts only 90 minutes after the brain has fallen asleep. It is very short, after which a long phase of dreamless sleep occurs – nREM phase, after which paradoxical sleep comes again, this time for a little longer. The closer our ultimate awakening after the usual 8 hours of sleep is, the longer and more paradoxical dreaming is – it is getting closer to the waking state, but the more we sleep, the more vivid dreams are, and the deception and lies of our sleep get more real. This is where we come to the ultimate essence of our endeavor – which is by no means the beginning of sleep or evening exercise session, but the complete opposite of that. In most cases, we wake up very close to the REM phase, or paradoxical sleep – whether due to an alarm or a habit, we enter a conscious state in which our brain operates in the Beta frequency, which we call the waking or “normal” state. This moment of awakening represents almost the only link when the waking state is on the very border with the neighboring paradoxical state – without an excessive boundary of unconsciousness or interruption of consciousness. Because both the waking and the paradoxical state have a completely similar mechanism and frequency of wakefulness – with the paradoxical state, i.e., dreaming being more awake than wakefulness, so unconscious of the fact that it is awake – from which the notion “paradoxical” derives its meaning. This transition between dreaming and waking – which we call the process of waking – contains this brief, phenomenal element of the overlap of these two states, in which we are equally awake and equally asleep. We have mentioned with the extreme tendency that this is almost the only link because there is another, a completely extraordinary circumstance where the waking state directly relies on a paradoxical sleep – and that is during an afternoon nap, which we will take special care of and take enough time for in the course of this study. Therefore, all the illusion that this state can be reached through meditation, visualization, imagination, and all other “usual suspects” is, in fact, a complete detour – it is far from saying that we won’t be able to reach the goal this way, but it is completely desperate to accustom your own lovely nature to a ridiculous clay uphill road when there is such a smooth and spacious meadow in front of it, which it has already been walking along so perfectly and with such ultimate pleasure.
Our nature has done everything to completely cover these few moments with the fog of the ordinariness of life; we get up as soon as possible to look at what time it is and turn off the alarm, we get out of bed mechanically even if we have nothing to do, we get out of bed as soon as if it were the cause of all our doom or root of all our fears, or as if it were a trap from which we must wriggle out as soon as possible. We are further and further away from the most sublime state that the human brain can ever realize by each millimeter of the body movement and every second of time since the moment of awakening. This state is so contrary to all our habits – those that have contributed to us being where we are; it is on the brink of the abyss of insanity as those few seconds of our lives which are uselessly thrown away are the spot in front of which lies the most precious miracle of the human existence. This state is not “somewhere” but “sometimes”; the paradise to which we all aspire so much is a moment of time, not space. It is a moment that lasts only a few seconds after our awakening, which is all the difference between the Adept in lucid dreaming and an utterly untrained mind. The difference between the two is not in the grades that last for years or decades or in Asana and Dharana, which requires us to go to the distant caves. All the difference is in those few seconds after we have woken up, especially once we have added a few more tricks to it.
SUCCESS STRATEGY
There really are not enough efforts to express all the significance of the first few seconds after waking up. It is the place of our pilgrimage; everything we are going to do from now on is directed toward this holy place. It is extremely important to create a reflex of not moving and not opening our eyes during this time. This is a very tricky thing that will take some time, but there are certain things that make this process easier. What will consume all the available energy and ingenuity are two things:
- when to do
- what to do
We defined the first thing within the first few seconds of our awakening, which should happen naturally and spontaneously, not caused by an alarm. The only condition of this point is that we remain motionless with our eyes closed after waking up.
The crucial is to make autosuggestion before going to bed, telling ourselves that we shall wake up without moving and remain motionless after waking up. This affirmation has to be as short and effective as possible; something like, “I am awakening without moving” is quite appropriate for this whole thing. You shall never repeat an affirmation during the day, nor shall you think that such repetition will increase your chances of success. On the contrary, in this way, you are causing your being to resist and create a habit to interpret the whole affirmation as a routinely distant thing, which is absolutely unacceptable for us. All that is really needed is that the moment we go to bed, we start repeating ourselves the chosen affirmation. It is of great importance that the affirmation is made being convinced and having a feeling as if we have indeed awakened and that we are motionless all the time once we have woken up, suggesting this we are experiencing a false present – it is such a small detail that makes such a big difference from the mere hypnotic and parrot-like repetition of the suggestion. It is also important that from the moment we start making an affirmation until we have fallen asleep, we must remain in a single position without moving, thus giving importance to the idea of continuity of immovable position, which will eventually continue after waking up. In fact, with all these elements, we frame the immobility of the body and the continuity of one position on both sides of dreaming – both before and after the dream, providing additional inputs to our unconscious mind that will drastically increase the chances. Making an affirmation is glued to the determination not to move, so our body will remember the affirmation along with the position, which – being unchanged and motionless reinforces the affirmation and intention to stay still after waking up even further, rounding off the idea at much wider and more compact scale. In a way, repeating the affirmation with a determination not to move until we have fallen asleep seems to lock information about the continuity of the position in the body, which will automatically turn on after waking up. It is simply unimaginable to guess how many miracles there are in front of our noses if we manage to do such a simple thing. Such a small thing triggers a myriad of mechanisms that make it possible to experience something that sheds an entirely different light on everything we do in life. All the rituals, meditations, techniques, everything we perform in our art is really nothing compared to the realization of lucid consciousness that begins with such a nebulous instruction, such as the instruction to remain motionless with our lids shut after waking up.
Another way we can effectively make an affirmation that will help it to be perceived in our unconscious mind in a much better way is by changing the pace of its utterance to the extreme. After a few minutes of repeating the affirmation at a normal pace, we will now speed up to the point that we can barely make it out. There should not be any pause between words; also, sentences themselves must be leaning against each other without a full stop, that is, without any breaks:
“IamawakeningwithoutmovingIamawakeningwithoutmovingIamawakeningwithoutmovingIamawakeningwithoutmovingIamawakeningwithoutmoving.”
After a while, and it is only a matter of a few minutes, a specific state will be created, a feeling in which the frantic repetition of the sentence sculpted our mind in such a special way as if a quick mumble filled the void with a specific sensation, subtle but relatively constant. Now stop repeating the affirmation and just keep nurturing that feeling. It is the imprint of the affirmation in our mind that resonates like an echo, and if you keep it in your mind, that same mind will now imprint the affirmation even more even though you do not have to repeat a single word at all – just a gentle and pleasant focus on that feeling that arises after a quick repetition of your affirmation’s wording does the whole job. You can almost feel the tension in the area of the brain almost burning from the rapid repetition of the affirmation; all it takes is to pamper that flame with your attention and spread it – you should simply repeat the affirmation in an advanced way. It is convenient to do the opposite thing, too; after a few minutes of such a hasty way of repeating, we need to slow down so much that we repeat a single sentence like a slow-motion – as slowly as possible. In doing so, we must retain the meaning of the sentence, which must not be lost by excessive deceleration; just imagine that a record has broken down and now the affirmation …. laaaaaast …… for sooooooooo …. loooooooooong ……..
There is another extremely effective way that further imprints the affirmation in mind. It is accentuating of a word during repetition, with a different word accented each time, with full awareness of the word being uttered:
“I AM” waking without a movement
I am “WAKING” without a movement
I am waking “WITHOUT” a movement
I am waking without “A MOVEMENT”
This kind of repetition has a special effect on the mind, which now performs this whole command more diligently and much faster.
The best for the Aspirant would be to use all these methods to introduce his own ones or modify the above mentioned; the more various methods he uses, the deeper and more vividly the affirmation will be imprinted in his mind, and thus the more expedient it will be. Affirmation and mind are like fish and a pond; one fish can be caught in different ways, and the more different baits and rods we have, the better our chances are. Also, it is not enough to just catch a fish; we must equally strive to keep it alive once we have put it in the fishing net. Therefore, it would not suffice to repeat the affirmation endlessly but to force our mind to receive and nest it so that it begins to bear fruit. The repetition that is too static and uninventive will bring what will later be noticed in our lucid adventures, and that is immunity to successful techniques. We must continuously and permanently make steps forward in our methods, constantly introducing new elements, constantly changing form and structure. Once he has found himself in a dream, the Aspirant must continuously move, constantly touch and feel the shape of a dream, constantly have an action that carries him further through the dream. Any stagnation, even holding your gaze in a vision for more than a few moments leads to the collapse of such an experience and return to the waking state, which will certainly be discussed later. After working with the affirmation for a while, but in a lively and vigorous way, try to fall asleep but without moving – in the same way as you are expecting to wake up. All that can happen are two options.
The first, quite likely – to wake up moving and opening your eyes, get up and go to the bathroom, or start preparing breakfast only to realize that you have missed the opportunity and that the affirmation was not that clearly imprinted to be able to attack the habit of moving and getting up. As soon as you realize that you have failed, go back to bed immediately, pretending to have just woken up and been amazed at how you found yourself motionless and with your eyes closed. Act that situation out as if it has just happened and as if you have achieved success. Pretend that you are very surprised, excited, and happy to have achieved stillness and closed your eyes. Even if you have made minimal movements after waking up, it is very important to calmly return to the position you got up from as if you were reminding yourself of the command you were supposed to do, then pretend to have woken up and that you managed to stay still with your eyes closed. Something as if you were creating quite a new past, cutting all unfavorable future, and pasting over the present you choose.
After this, feel free to return to your daily routine; it is an equally valuable imprint as if you managed to remain still, which will manifest its mechanism in the coming days. Every time there is a movement of the body because you have forgotten to stay still and with the lids closed, you do exactly the same thing – go back to bed slowly, like rewinding a film, laying your head on a pillow as if you have cut the time corridor of your failure and now you are falsely inserting a new reality in which you have managed to wake up without moving and opening your eyes.
Sooner or later, you will come across a second possibility in which you have invested days of effort; one morning, you will wake up and find yourself staring into the blackness of your eyelids, remaining still, instantly remembering that it should stay that way. It is a truly wonderful moment that will not bring you so close to a lucid dream as it will show you a very clear path – the one you can follow. It will show you that one mechanism is starting to work; it is a special joy that spreads through your being once you have realized that your dormant structures are exactly the same as mine and that the experience I am talking about will be the same as yours you are just experiencing. You will almost feel that wonderful scent of a lucid dream which, literally, is only a few tens of seconds away in those moments. However, it is quite certain that at that moment, you will be so euphoric about success, just as you will be the next few times, that you will ultimately wake up due to such euphoria. And that is what we need the least. Your euphoria and increased attention will do to your being the same moving the body and opening the eyes does; it will throw you out of a position where you would continue to move lucidly. Body movement is stagnation in a dream, and vice versa: movement in a dream implies complete bodily stagnation and stillness.
Repeating the affirmation should become your evening routine; in fact, whenever you go to bed, even during an afternoon nap, let it be your habit to repeat to yourself that you will wake up without moving and opening your eyes. This is by far the most important step in this whole experiment, and if the awakening happens without physically moving and opening the eyes, it can be said that success is largely guaranteed if the following steps are adhered to. As amazing and difficult as it may seem, complete success in this will come after no more than 2 to 3 weeks. In fact, the first success can come after 2 or 3 days, but what we need is the percentage of continued success, that is, at least two nights a week to be able to stay still after waking up. It is then that we set out to do the next thing that is bringing us closer to a lucid dream even more substantially.
PHANTASMAL MOVEMENT
Once we have found ourselves awake and motionless, without opening our eyes, we can finally do the thing that introduces us to the world of lucidity, and that is one completely paradoxical thing – we will move. Namely, after we have woken up without moving, we will now just start moving, but in an extraordinary way – this movement will not be physical at all, but mental. For that occasion, I want you to try something right now; while reading, make a break leaning back in your chair, close your eyes, and calm down, like a stone statue. Now, I want you to start nodding your head back and forth, like a pendulum. Imagine that your head is tied to your body over your neck, making it one big pendulum; move your head 5 cm forward and then move it the same distance but backward. Make that rocking motion quite gently, like a clock pendulum. You make this movement subtly, by no means making pauses or forcibly stopping your head. Do it as if you were putting the mind to sleep in the cradle of your skull. After a couple of swings, now continue to swing your head but reduce the amplitude – instead of 5 cm, you will now shorten it to just one centimeter. Repeat the head moves back and forth several times. In the end, the most important part is to follow – you will move your head minimally, reducing the amplitude of the head movement to only a millimeter as much as you can. That movement will be more a thing of your mind than you will actually move. I want you to honestly just think you are moving your head, not even knowing if you are moving it. Keep reducing that movement even more now, until it has become imaginary and your head turns static. Something too extraordinary is going to happen – you will still feel that movement and that rocking as if you are really shaking your head. We need this movement – phantasmagoric oscillation; such a movement is not performed physically but leads to a physical sensation of movement; it is so minor that your intention rather than your muscles perform it. You can now do the same by moving your head left and right, in exactly the same way and with the same procedure: first, do the physical movement for a while, then reduce the amplitude of the movement until you finally start doing it in your mind. This false or phantasmal move is crucial to the whole endeavor. Head movement is especially important, much more important than the movement of other parts of the body because, during the REM phase, the head contains the only body segment that is allowed to move, and that is the eyes, while from the neck down, our body is paralyzed. We deliberately explained this phantom head movement before the next step, although it follows it, because its projection is already piercing your mind now and, like seeds, it has already started growing its sprouts in the soil of your dormant nature.
SLEEP PARALYSIS
After waking up without moving, we will try to maintain enthusiasm and wait no more than a few seconds. We will notice a very unusual circumstance that happens to our body if we continue with immovability; after a few moments, we get a weird feeling as if we were tilted to the side, our body sensation changes completely, we start feeling certain warmth. In fact, there is a wide specter of different events that all point to one thing – our body falls back into sleep while our mind stays awake. It does not matter what happens and how this change in experiencing your body manifests as long as we feel that “something” strange is happening. Scientifically put, our body enters a state of sleep paralysis, which is the next step for a further descent into the regions of dreaming, ensuring that dreaming happens at all. Our brain, because we have remained motionless with our eyes closed, misinterpreted that we have woken up by accident – just as it happens many times during the night – where we wake up for a very short time to continue sleeping without being aware of that. Therefore, this very event where we remained motionless with our eyes closed is enough to confuse our brain, locking the body and introducing the same dreaming procedure that it has been doing since we were born, and even more – since the dawn of mankind. Sleep paralysis is as much a change in the experience of the body as it is in the experience of the psyche. In addition to the fact that we feel that something in our body has changed, very peculiar things will start happening concerning our observation. The first and most important is the sonic hallucination, where we usually hear the voices of our loved ones whispering, speaking, waking us up, or asking us to move. We can hear a neighbor playing music, dogs barking, or someone turning on the television in the next room. However, all those perceptions are part of the same illusion and deception – they are in our head, and really nowhere else. Many practitioners attach them epithets of importance, even crucial for their destiny – they consider the meaning of these voices looking for deeper connotation and analysis, but the truth is that these are only empty mental shells and indicators that we are falling asleep, and nothing more.
After the first few seconds after waking up, remaining motionless, and after feeling the perception of the body change, we do the phantom head movement – the way we have learned earlier, not in a physical way – minimally and with such a small amplitude that the rocking motion is not to be found in centimeters but our imagination. This movement is like a decoy, which bites a predator in the pond of the mind; at some point, this movement will hook up the mechanism of separation from the body, which will start taking place extremely quickly. This movement must be carried out resolutely and without ceasing. Separation can always happen and at any moment, so in the first half a minute, it can seem that everything is entirely in vain, and a second later, we can hear someone whisper, or feel a warm blanket falling over us, or feel our body bend, or fall through the floor. It is of the utmost importance that this movement is consistently repeated for some time and that it is never stopped at any cost, especially if one gets the impression that nothing worthwhile is happening and that one should give up. This movement must be carried out for at least a minute or even two, and no matter how small chances may seem that something will happen, it has to be carried out persistently and without backing off. What happens next is one of the most interesting experiences the Aspirant can have in his life until then – you will really start to move and have a genuine sense of that movement. Your sense of the body will be transformed into a feeling similar to that when a fly gets caught in a spider’s web, or as if you are immersed in some gelatin; as if your dream body is connected to the physical by some phantasmagoric glue, and the movement you are performing will contribute to that glue losing its grip and letting go.
When this happens, keep shaking your head, now increasing the amplitude. No matter how much this instruction might seem ambiguous now, at that moment, everything will be perfectly clear to you. By increasing the amplitude, you will reach a kind of a dead-end state; now follows a crucial and final movement that brings the whole operation to a climax – now you will be rolling out of your body in the last swing, falling next to your bed. This is one of the most beautiful experiences in our art – you will find yourself in the darkness on the floor of your room. Far from being able to see anything, you will have a clear tactile feeling that you are on the floor and that you are now feeling it with your hands. You will get in a part of reality that is entirely unique: you will still be feeling your body in bed while still being on the floor, with all the sense of space and dimensions right from that place. You will be in the body, but now that body is by no means in bed but on the floor, waiting for instructions on what to do next.
VOID
The most important thing is to remember that you should not stay on the floor – touching over the floor, you should get to the first nearest wall. You still won’t see anything, and if you try to open your eyes now, feeling shocked, you will suddenly experience a return to the physicality that has been lying in bed all the time. Opening your eyes is impossible at this stage because you still do not have eyes, nor do you have a body of any kind, or the ability to experience anything other than touching that is the only real sense you have. Your being has not yet built the foundations of your new reality, and you will find yourself in very awkward terrain – too awake to get a perception of a dream, but still too dreamy to submit yourself to a field of the body lying a meter away from you. All you have to do is touch and feel. Try a very simple experiment; close your eyes now and get to your bathroom without opening your eyes but groping for things. You would first come to a nearby wall, and then feeling the surface of the wall with your palms all the time you will move forward toward where your bathroom is, encountering switches and other things that are on the wall. But what is of precious importance is the continuity of feelings that your mind will receive through the palms of your hands. You will not get a picture of where you are going, but you will definitely know where you are and where you are going through tactile feelings brought to you by your fingers and palms. Now I want you to do the same, starting from an awkward position you have found yourself in, throwing yourself out of your physical body. Feel the floor until you reach the wall, and then continuing with your palms all over the wall, stand up straight, never separating your hands from that wall. Even if you have to move to another wall, do it quickly and energetically – that feeling of the wall sliding under your palms is the only anchor that could save you in this storm of mental information and the desire of your mind to return to the body. In this segment of work, it is enough to stay in one place for even a few moments, and you will come back – completely clearly and unambiguously being there in the waking world, in your bed, trapped in this reality. The return is inevitable, but we will continue to feel and touch further and further on from the body, groping the walls and sliding with our palms. Our only way is to move away from the body – that body keeps drawing us back with an exceptional kind of force like gravity, and all we need to do is move away from it, by touching and sliding our palms over solid surfaces. That is the only and exclusive goal of this part of the work. We continue to grope further, coming to the door of our apartment, we feel that surface which is considerably different from the wall, we feel a bit rougher nature of the woodwork, then we come to the doorknob, groping all the time; by no means lifting our hands up and ceasing to have contact with the surface we have been touching all the time with our palms. And most importantly, we must not stop moving under any circumstances; our palms must not stay in the same place for more than a moment.
It is necessary to say a little more about this strange place – which is gaining more in its reality as we keep moving further away from the body, and our mind gets filled up with information about that tangible path we have walked. Every inch, we are more and more in an extraordinary realm while being less and less in our bed. At some point, we will be completely devoid of any sense of the physical body, groping against the walls of something we think is our room. We are really in a unique void, in the dark. Still, that void has such a living potential, as if we were in a white noise area between radio stations – we really know that there are radio programs and radio stations all around us, but miraculously we are in the area between now – all we perceive is the tuning sound and white noise. Also, the feeling we have about ourselves is something extremely fantastic – the difference between this consciousness and the one that is waiting for us in bed is like between heavens and earth, like the difference between this consciousness now as you are reading these letters and the consciousness after drinking a liter of wine. As much as you feel alone in that void, there will be life all around you, and you will have a very clear knowledge of it. However, something will be missing. It is as if a large part of you is left in that body that is left lying – together with all the burden and a bag of thoughts that your body carries around all the time. You will be free as never before, not on your own, but rather outside of your own, far away from yourself in that void, groping and walking through all that wonderful and living darkness.
And in all that distancing from the bed where your sleeping body is, groping against the walls, you will be amazed when you touch a light switch that does not exist at all in your real room. But that switch will seem quite realistic – merely inviting you to stop there and study it well. Whatever you do, do not stop by any means, grope further, go over it, explore every new millimeter of the wall without stopping your exploration, divinely touching and sliding your palms over the new reality, always further. At one point, something wonderful will happen. A visual representation of the reality you have been touching all this time will begin to appear. Right then, the outlines appear, and then quite suddenly the whole room, or the hallway or the lobby of the apartment where you are – suddenly, a vision appears all around you. And you, completely taken aback by this marvelous moment, in a completely new world, will have very little time to feel it. Make sure you feel the atmosphere of that world well because you will return to your body very soon. Those are but moments and your first projection outside your body will always end up very quickly – in your body. New fantastic experiences that are brought back upon your return are countless. You are astonished and bewildered with what has happened to you. It is there exactly where our entire art will seem quite differently – precisely because it has really started working for the first time.
It is very useful to make a palpable tactile path – a route that you will always follow. For example, the moment you find yourself on the floor, you feel the nearest wall, then you slide your palms along it going towards the door, you come to the handle that you open. You go over the wall to the entrance hallway and come to the front door, then to the front door handle that you open and exit into the hallway of the building. With the same tactile action, without lifting your palms and fingers off the surface, you feel the handrail and go down the stairs to the exit of the building. This would be quite enough to follow until a vision emerges.
The experience of returning to the body is always accompanied by a very special kind of fatigue, which is so characteristic of all lucid endeavors. It is a mixture of sweet intoxication, exhaustion, enthusiasm, euphoria, and electrical impulsiveness that is felt in every atom of your being. The whole next day will be spiced with these impressions, in fact, nothing will be the same after this, and your trajectory in our art will get a completely different vector now. Until now, every rocket fired from the ground inevitably fell down, but for the first time, now the projectile of your will has reached a sufficient speed to leave the shackles of the ground forever. From now on, your path will be paved with stars, and only the boundaries of your mind will determine the boundaries of the region in which you will reside.
It is necessary to summarize all the steps briefly as this skill easily turns into a set of completely random movements if we do not follow the instructions.
First and foremost, it is necessary to acquire the habit of waking up without moving and opening our eyes. Once we have succeeded and found ourselves waking up motionless and with our lids closed, we wait a few seconds and carefully observe the feeling that our body gives us, which starts to change drastically after a few seconds. It is as if someone has covered us with a warm blanket, or as if we feel that we are in a slightly different position than a moment ago. At that moment, we start with a phantasmagoric nodding of the head back and forth, imagining a miniature movement – almost as if we were performing it physically. That movement must be in thousands of millimeters, just enough to feel the movement of the head without even moving. As if the thought of moving leads to a sense of movement. Right then, the body will fall into a particular state of trance, which can be accompanied by various sensory phenomena, to which we should not pay any attention. All we need to do is increase the amplitude of the swing, and in one moment that is entirely intuitively felt, we fly completely out of that amplitude, falling to the floor. As soon as we have fallen onto the floor, we should start groping with our palms across the floor, moving away from the body. We will be in the dark, but let our progress through that darkness not be disturbed at all. We get to the walls; we start touching the walls by going over things, pictures, light switches, furniture, always moving away from the body. At some point, the vision will start to intensify, and we will find ourselves in a three-dimensional environment.
This is all you need to know for now; now that we have set out clear beacons, let us get down to the details.
OBSTACLES AND SHORTCUTS
1.
The first thing we could come across is a specific change in consciousness that happens the first few seconds after we wake up, remaining motionless. Those few seconds before we start moving our head lead to a huge change in consciousness containing elements of an autoimmune reaction to this whole thing, and often these elements do not hesitate to do anything needed to bring us back into the body. In fact, the whole lucid experience is all that our being does not want. Not because it thinks it is bad, but because it is not familiar with it. As the fear of water, in the same way, but immeasurably times stronger, there will be fear of a completely different world, a completely different reality, and completely different consciousness. For your being, for your mind, this experience will be completely similar to the experience of dying, to which we have no attitude because we absolutely do not know what it is. Our reactive mind has subordinated the whole dream and the mechanism of sleep to the benefit of our being, so now the consciousness in the dream is an intruder towards which it will have no mercy. The ways in which it will try to bring consciousness back under the auspices of our body are so cunning and varied that we could write a separate book on it, which we certainly have neither the time nor the place for here. However, the point is to know that every second of experience in a lucid dream is actually a struggle not to go back to the body, and our reactive mind will now turn you against itself with the same creativity with which it has been constructing our sweet dreams for years, setting traps and obstacles after which you will look disappointedly at the blackness of the eyelids instead of at the diversity of the astral landscape.
2.
The second is undoubtedly the appearance of fear in the phase of sleep paralysis. This is the first line of soldiers sent by our mind to distract us from all this before we even come out of the body. Always keep in mind that you are a stranger to that mind as long as you think about the same mind. The moment you stop thinking about it, then your old mother is satisfied, always thinking of her child to be well-fed and put to sleep. Nevertheless, what the mind wants is for you to be within its reach ultimately. Not so that it can control you, but for it to be able to take care of you, look after you, always having you just for itself. The Neophyte must understand this mechanism because the difference in perception determines the ability to dive into sleep. The depth of sleep is not achieved by a ritual or technique, but exclusively by understanding the mechanism of the mind by which it is constructed, on a wholly archetypal and primordial plane. Fear is the first and strongest whip of a great mother to make her child stay in the room and finally fall asleep. This fear, which occurs almost automatically when we enter a state of sleep paralysis, already after the first few seconds of immobility after waking up, is the most terrifying and creepy thing an Aspirant can feel on his skin. Especially when this phenomenon is accompanied by the nature of the void in which we shall soon find ourselves, they act with equal force on the Aspirant’s mind like the most terrible nightmare.
But such fear is always and exclusively possible when we have stagnation in projection, that is, when we do not have a clear plan and intention to move away from our body. And the closer we are to the body, the greater and more paralyzing the fear will be; as we keep going away from the body by groping, so the fear will disappear the way the effect of gravity weakens once a rocket has been launched. At the same time, one of the characteristics of a lucid dream is that the moment a vision and a dream scenario appears, the fear disappears the same moment as if wiped off. In fact, fear almost always occurs during sleep paralysis – when we are still in the body, never during a full astral experience. When it appears, it is only an indication that we are on the right path and that we now need to get out of that “middle state” with intensive action in which we are neither awake nor asleep. And the way out is with a phantom movement, little by little as if we want to get out of the quicksand and break away from the sticky slime that keeps us chained to a sleeping body in bed. Get out of bed, get away from your body, little by little, keep on going away; the act of moving your head is the only thing you need and which you need to dedicate yourself to completely. This is a very simple instruction but crucial to success. Your subconscious does not want enlightenment; it does not want the light of knowledge. It just wants you to feel safe in the dream that it has constructed just for you so devotedly. It wants you only for itself; it does not want change; it does not want the truth; it does not want anything but you. Your bed is a mental projection of security, and it is nothing but a shadow that fights frantically for every second of your unconscious and your dormant nature. As much as a dream is a mold for the Will, so is the darkness and paralysis of sleep the plasticine that our shadow plays with, always making what we are afraid of, sculpting that form of horror and terror in a unique way, just because we deviated from the path. And instead of moving away from the body with the tactile imagination of touching, we are now standing still letting fear touch us, sting and frighten us in a way only our mind is aware of – knowing every nightmare dreamt of and every phobia of ours – because, in the end – or mind is what has constructed them.
3.
It is very important not to try for two days in a row. This is one of the biggest causes of failure, especially when the first couple of successful lucid dreams happen, then a dry period follows very quickly when we are really unable to accomplish anything. This is partly because the mechanism of dreaming has been disrupted, and we have violently penetrated parts of sleep by declaring war on our reactive mind, which now tries to think of the ways to take us back from mad and adolescent tendency to separate from the only true parent – our mind. If we try day after day, the dream cycle will shift, and we will enter a period when it is impossible to reach the same circumstances and conditions that are responsible for the REM phase. A similar thing happens if we go to bed late for two days in a row. There is a well-known problem of “replacing day for night” when we are rested during the day, but as we do not have an opportunity to get any sleep in the evening. Nights with insomnia will follow, which is further intensified by our neurosis and thoughts after going to bed already calling for insomnia. Therefore, the very important thing is to allow one day of natural awakening and natural sleep after each attempt at lucidity, letting our mind seemingly take the lead in this match. It is a tactical retreat, a deliberate slow-down to make the opponent think it is closer to us and speed up the pace to catch up, increasing our adversary’s chances of making a crucial mistake.
4.
Late meals and consuming water before bed can be a major cause of poor sleep, leading to a discordant proportion of nREM and REM phases. In fact, any significant awakening between REM phases affects the duration and quality of the REM phases negatively and the waking part of our lives as well, turning it into a vicious circle. There is one very simple solution that requires refraining from eating or drinking water 2 hours before going to bed. It is a very bad habit to drink water just before bedtime, partly because the water will soon cause a tendency to urinate, which either weakens sleep or leads to waking up too often. Preventing food and drink intake 2 hours before bedtime in lucid work sometimes makes the difference between complete success and the worst and ultimate failure; cases of people where this change only greatly facilitated lucid consciousness already on the first attempt are numerous. It should be emphasized that this thing significantly increases the chance of achieving a lucid dream, but it is by no means a condition for success. Only when all the mechanisms have been launched, including the diet and hydration regime, which are certainly very important, the projection is ensured and guaranteed. What we should be worried about is that slippery ground onto which our neurosis pushes us; simply, it is so easy to omit and overlook all these points for completely mundane reasons, and even though we are sure that we have constructed everything well, it can always happen that we have overlooked or missed just one or more points, sometimes wholly forgetting what we have to do anyway.
5.
During the first couple of successful motionless awakenings without opening our eyes, the level of euphoria will often completely prevent going back to sleep. Even if the mechanism of phantom head movement has been done for a whole minute to two, absolutely nothing will happen. We are simply so excited that mental euphoria has had the same effect on the mind as to any physical movement or eyelid opening – in other words, it has awakened us and brought us back to the Beta phase of brain activity. There is such a perfect and simple aid here, which can actually be applied whenever we awake with movement or even remain motionless but with a great deal of mental activity and euphoria. This is the identical action we described in the chapter on scrying; slight, almost imperceptible squeezing of the eyeballs, imagining looking back toward the center of the skull produces a special feeling of drowsiness, something like mental yawning, which has a remarkable effect on our mind when performed in the period after waking up, and in just a few seconds, brings us back into a state of extreme drowsiness. Such an act should never last more than a few seconds – even a second more, and we can completely fall into the oblivion of sleep. This is a kind of a seesaw that multiplies our chance of success of the subsequent phantom movement when mastered well. Personally, I always take this step no matter how close to success I am; this eye movement and, more precisely, that mental attitude is crucial in obtaining visions, which, when carried out by the Aspirant, can bring crystal clear images even during the fully awake state, in just a few seconds.
Another particularly good way to speed up the mechanism of sleep paralysis is to simply pretend we are sleeping in the first few seconds after waking up and stay still, deceiving our own mind. Imagine that falling down, falling through the floor, into the dark bottom of dormant reality, welcoming you so warmly. Pretend that this is precisely what is happening; imagine for a moment that feeling of warmth of the unconscious luring you down, deeper and deeper, below you, sinking toward that warm and pleasant depth. After a few seconds of doing this, we can start the phantom movement of our head.
6.
The need for visualization is an old, good foe of everything we want to achieve here. No visualization or construction of mental images is necessary; on the contrary – they significantly reduce our chances to succeed. All that is needed is primarily tactile, not visual imagination. What we need is to imagine and feel the movement, so you shall not imagine a single image until the very lucid dream. Vision will come by itself, the moment you bring your mind into a state in which it will naturally talk to you in images. However, until you have left your body, visualization is entirely redundant. The whole concept of Western ceremonial magic is rather based on this ability, which really has no standpoint in the technique of lucid dreaming. It can be said that the endless queues of practitioners waiting in line for an astral projection are so long because the whole mechanism has been established upon utterly wrong assumptions and strategies. In fact, all rituals have a completely different effect once they have been performed in a dream when their effect gets boosted and energized to the extreme. Whenever practitioners cite Liber “O” as a method of rising on the planes, it simply cannot help but evoke sadness and compassion in me for all those people who keep endlessly trying something that absolutely should not be done from the physical plane, nor does such performance bring anything but an exercise in basic visualization, and really nothing more than that. If this instruction from Liber “O” is applied from this plane, it looks like a fairy tale, like a journey of imagination, and it really has nothing to do with discovering higher and deeper spheres that are so concrete and tangible. But, if the Aspirant embraces this instruction in a lucid dream precisely, once he has already reached it, then this is the most sublime instruction possible. There is nothing more penetrating for human consciousness than the desire to go “up” in a dream, and it will certainly be one of the experiences that the Aspirant has remembered for the rest of his life. Indeed, if the rising on the plane, as stated in Liber “O,” is derived from a lucid dream or from certain places in the dream which will be discussed later, then the whole exercise radiates millions of suns brighter.
7.
There is one completely incomprehensible obstacle that happens with all practitioners, and that is the tendency to shorten the performance of a phantom movement by a whole minute, or do something else, or simply give up going back to sleep. Shortening the performance of this movement is certainly one of the key factors that prevent us from penetrating a conscious dream. Right next to it, there is a difficulty in recognizing that we are in sleep paralysis; unfortunately, this knowledge is often obtained once we have given up and came back to wakefulness, which will be too late. Simply, we will really begin to face all the circumstances that accompany sleep paralysis, from sound hallucinations, dogs barking, or someone ringing our doorbell, for example. Still, we will react to these hallucinations completely without realizing that we are in another reality, and instead of starting detaching ourselves from our body with a rocking motion and finally slipping off the bed, we will misdirect ourselves on these sound illusions, reacting to them in a physical way, that is, by movement. As we have said earlier, we will hear the doorbell ring, and we will stand up to check who came to visit us as a response to that stimulus, stunned to realize that we have fallen under the influence of our reactive mind and done the last thing we had to do – we have made a physical movement and break Ariadne’s thread that leads us to the depths of a dream.
8.
Sleep interruption is an aid that creates an ideal “sweet spot” for entering the lucid dream. It is like a scouting team in a war, which is to prepare the whole strategy able to win the whole war with a single piece of information. Suppose we pay attention to the sleep diagram once again. In that case, we will notice that the REM phase is the longest before awakening. It lasts approximately 5 to 6 hours after going to bed, or to be more precise – after falling asleep. We should definitely add another 15 minutes to that time – as long it takes to start the process of falling asleep. Our brain has a phenomenal mechanism that continues the sleep phase at the spot where we have left off, even after we wake up. That is to say, once we wake up during the REM phase, and after we went back to bed again, we will enter the same REM phase, without losing 90 minutes of nREM nothingness in which there is no onyric activity. Also, the process of falling asleep is much faster, so once we have gone back to bed after waking up and going to the toilet, we will easily fall asleep again and enter directly into the dream phase – it is even possible to continue the dream from where we interrupted it, like after a pause while watching a movie. This beautiful mechanism exerts such violent pressure towards our goal – all it takes is to set the alarm to go off 5 to 6 hours after we went to bed; sometimes it should be shorter, sometimes longer, but this time window should be our approximate target. With more experience, we will define our ideal personal moment much more precisely to be able to apply this as successful as possible. After an alarm clock wakes us up, after 5 or 6 hours of sleep, a very important instruction is to follow. We have to get out of bed and stay out of it for about 15 minutes to half an hour. We can go to the toilet, turn on the computer and check emails, we are free to go out on the terrace and breathe fresh air, but whatever we do, we do it out of bed. That intention to get out of the area that has been so vilely constraining us in the most perfidious type of prison has a pervasive effect on success in lucid dreaming. After about 15 minutes, we will go back to bed and repeat the affirmation that we will wake up without moving and opening our eyes. This time, its path to our unconscious mind is much shorter and easier to accomplish, freed by a frigid nREM phase that so vilely erases all our intentions and desires and brings a dream that suits our reactive mind. We should not exaggerate this – we need not be making an affirmation for more than 5 minutes. We then have to fall asleep; the next awakening should be natural, and we will notice how much more frequent and successful awakening without moving is if we take this break. It is a quantitative gain; in terms of quality, getting into sleep paralysis and rolling out of bed with an imaginary movement is incomparably more successful than when the affirmation is made just before bedtime. It is a very good idea to drink a glass of water after the first awakening with an alarm so that the discomfort in the bladder creates a shallow sleep, which is so suitable for entering a lucid dream. With this method, the second awakening, which is always without an alarm, will be permeated by a particular dose of drowsiness and a special kind of faintness – as if our brain was swimming in the fluid of sleep and we can barely keep our attention, you will almost feel pressure in the head and have headaches from so much drowsiness. This is exactly what we need, this swimming of the mind in a pond of unconscious nature sculpting a dream and creating an ideal polygon for lucid dreaming. There is only one danger that happens to beginners too often; it is insomnia, which can occur after we get up for the first time with an alarm, and once we went back to sleep. After making an affirmation that we will wake up without moving and opening our eyes, it is quite possible that we will not be able to fall asleep again, no matter how hard we try. Even more, we will be awake like never before. Our unconscious nature finds a way to hinder us on our inner journey once and again, just as it did create fear in sleep paralysis, and instead of covering us with drowsiness and unwillingness to do anything consciously or have the strength for such endeavors, it now sets an opposite trap – partly because of the euphoria and anticipation of a lucid dream – now our alertness rises to such a level that we are so awake, with no chance of falling asleep. What is extremely important, if we find ourselves in this kind of insomnia, is to lie consciously without a single move of the body at any cost. We will notice that our own body dares and ridicules us, making every inch of us itch to the point that staying in one position is completely impossible. But we have to persevere in this and passively wait for the body to fall asleep. This insomnia will be dominant in more introverted people during the first few attempts. Still, like any other artificial creation of our unconscious mind, it will subside with time and patience – the only weapons to which the reactive mind has no counterparts. Also, a slight squeeze on the eyeballs and a subtle shift of gaze upward, looking toward the scalp, toward the center of the skull, does wonders and puts many people to sleep in a few seconds, so this technique can ideally be applied in this place too. In any case, by no means should you try for 2 days in a row – especially if you are attempting the method of interrupting sleep after 5 to 6 hours. If you choose this method, which multiplies the chances of success, you should not try more than 3 nights a week. It is best not to set predetermined days for attempts at lucid dreaming, for every routine leads to the involvement of the reactive mind and the creation of immunity and a strategy by which it will act against us; let your attempts be spontaneous and free from any pre-arranged schedule. A framed procedure will be much needed to persevere in the technique of moving the head and in those small steps after we have left the body. This is where we need to stick to military discipline, and we will witness that in those moments, as our minds will sway like a leaf in a chaotic storm of unconsciousness.
9.
Indeed, the specific type of insomnia that accompanies practitioners in lucid attempts can be a major obstacle, affecting the entire following day and contributing to the Aspirant spinning in circles of nonsense without really doing anything. Insomnia that accompanies an attempt at lucid dreaming, especially when we use the method of interrupted sleep after 5 to 6 hours with an alarm, disrupts the sleep and dreaming cycle altogether, and thus the possibility of even accidental success in attaining lucid dreaming. But there is one utterly simple trick that insomnia is powerless against and can be used against insomnia regardless of our lucid dreaming attempts. All it takes is to try not to sleep on purpose – make an effort and pretend you don’t want to sleep at all, confronting your sleep openly and staying awake on purpose. Imagine that you will get in trouble if you fall asleep; try to want to stay awake on purpose. Very quickly, you will feel the mechanism of sleep and mind wondering that will soon navigate our being into regions of sleep.
10.
There is another extremely useful form of movement that separates consciousness from the region of the body in the period when we fall into sleep paralysis, after waking up still and remaining in that stillness for a few seconds. It is the imagining of falling backward motion, like a somersault backward, where this movement must not be in visual performance, but exclusively and only in a tactile sense. That backward movement of the head must be aggressive and full of impulse; we must do our best to keep turning backward, and that such a motion lasts at least one minute, no less. As with the phantom movement of the head, we must not let go or give up this movement just because it seems to us that nothing special is happening in the first minute. Separation can happen at any time, even when we are fully convinced that there will be no lucidity at all. And just when we are ready to give up everything, we suddenly obtain a strange feeling that our body is bending, that we are in an utterly undefined position, or we hear the barking of dogs outside or buzzing noise in the ears. In this case, the method by which we get completely out of the body is to simply roll to the side. That movement is a winning combination every time we find ourselves in sleep paralysis; the result will always be to find ourselves on the floor outside the bed, after which we start to touch the floor and walls and repeat the procedure that has already been clearly described.
11.
It is not uncommon for us to be uncertain whether we are in the void or reality at all. We could find ourselves in doubt as to whether we are dreaming or not, even later, when the lucid experience becomes more authentic. Fortunately, there is one straightforward method that can show us what the realm we are in is. In fact, it can be said that as soon as we have doubts, it is quite likely that we are inside a dream. Whenever we need to check if we are asleep, we should simply close our nostrils with the fingers of one hand and breathe through our nose. If we are sleeping, we will always be able to breathe, even though we have disabled our breathing with our fingers. The reactive mind cannot project and deprive the essential functions of life, of which it is a part. Therefore, regardless of its hidden intention, it always prioritizes processes that are as old as it is. Breathing is precisely the mechanism of the same tributary nature as the reactive mind, which both flow into the great ocean of our unconsciousness – which is the source of all these primordial mechanisms.
CONSTRUCTING A DREAM
Shaping the contours and scenarios of a dream is a very special branch in this art, which we have to describe in a little more detail. Although a lucid dream develops on its own after we have touched our way out of the body, such construction has flaws, which is that it has already been constructed in advance. It is difficult to go further, that is, deeper into a dream which was constructed by your reactive mind. The lucid dream becomes a projection right after we have started touching. With that touch, we get the knowledge and impressions from the very surface of the walls that create the whole world in our unconscious mind, together with the apartment, corridors, buildings, towns, and continents. There is a great trick – before we start with the whole procedure, an evening before, we decide and focus our attention to touch the wall of a completely different room. The moment we have started to touch the wall, after we slipped out of the body, with great astonishment, we will notice that now we are touching a completely different wall, which will be different in structure and shape from the one in our room. Here we come to one of the most important sleep laws, which is that it has been constructed long before we begin dreaming. By our Will, we will dream and touch another wall; the moment we feel the outlines of that wall with our palms, we create a scenario that corresponds to our projection at the same time. We can imagine feeling the walls of a spaceship, prehistoric cave, old Tibet temple, or the hotel where we last spent our summer vacation. It is important that we not create a projection of the change of location visually. We should get that belief through the relief of the walls and the tactile feeling, such as feeling the switches in the hotel room, the windows, or the door of a futuristic spaceship. This palpation is always and exclusively done inside the void when we separate from the body and fall off the bed – as a consequence of the rocking we did in sleep paralysis, which in turn is a consequence of being able to wake up without moving. Such groping results in the emergence of vision and the construction of a complete dream scenario sooner or later, in which we can now act at will and with which we can have full and lively interaction. But now is an excellent moment to discuss ways we can move out of the void which we got into after we had detached ourselves from the body with a phantom rocking motion or a somersault backward turn, depending on the method you have taken.
The first is one of my favorites, which always works so effectively and introduces an entirely random scenario at the same time. All that is needed in this technique is that once we have found ourselves in a void, we rub our palms as if we want to warm up; this rubbing should be decisive and impulsive as if we want to wash our hands with that void all around us. After a few seconds of rubbing our palms, we add up another movement, which now acts as an extra boost on a lucid trajectory. We then start blowing into our palms, rubbing them at the same time. Such action introduces another tactile sensation of air passing over our palms. It seems that our mind will simply be preoccupied with all these tactile sensations with this movement, and blowing into our palms like a magic brush, we will actually draw a dream scenario that will become more and more realistic and magical every second. With this method, it can happen that this blowing of a magic wind will start sculpting the shapes of a completely different city or area that we have never been to. That air that will pass over the rubbing palms will have an effect like rubbing a magic lamp – adorning the void with a spectacular vision for us to act and explore further.
The second way is very ingenious and is also based on tactile imagination. While we are in a void, imagine a train from the future passing by us at tremendous speed. This image must not be in a visual sense, it is enough just to know that such a train passes, the projection of which has already started engraving in your head as you are reading these words, so next time it is enough just to remember them and have a slight intention for a train to appear. Now, imagine that train has its doors open while passing right next to you. At that moment, hold on tightly to the opening with your hands, imagining how that train is now carrying you away from your location in an extremely fast and brisk flight. You will feel a strong thrust and have the impression that you are moving at high speed; now, by touching and palpation, build your way into the train slowly, and you will initiate a sudden vision. This is a great way to travel in a dream because you can reach any destination in time and space with the same train, whether it is the past, the future, or distant worlds or planets. It is enough that you intend for that train to pick you up before attempting a lucid dream once you have rolled out of bed and found yourself in the void. You will often meet other passengers on that train traveling in a similar way; it is always such a wonderful occasion speaking to them and seeing where they travel. Maybe you can get off together at a station and a location they will mention – thus allowing your Selfness to direct you further into a dream and some inner quest you need to accomplish. These are all details that help you move inventively through the dream – allowing the Angel to project what he wants. In a lucid dream, his influence will be much more open than it is the case with the physical world where his message is limited to your perception of synchronicity, which can happen all the time around you, but you simply cannot be able to perceive it. Here, however, the dream is the material for his fiery will, forging divine armor to fit your size and your needs.
Once the vision has been materialized around you and the dream scenario has been formed, you will notice a completely different way of functioning of your consciousness, which has changed as much as the whole world around you has changed; that wonderful feeling when you find yourself in the three-dimensional ambiance of a dream is the most magnificent thing that affects a practitioner’s soul, and as days after your first experience keep passing, you will be equally and intensely impressed by that experience. Even after years of practice, that situation when the outlines of a dream materialize around you remains equally enticing and a magnificent occurrence. Sometimes, observing that beautiful ambiance is all that is enough for me to experience. Very often, instead of fulfilling the action plan I envisioned, I completely change the route and simply observe that ambiance without going anywhere, like a mountaineer who climbed to the top of a mountain and now silently observing the infinity of the horizon, enjoying every second of that view. Unfortunately, such admiration usually lasts only a few moments. Without movement and plan, the dream collapses quickly, and I return to the body. But even so, such silent enjoyment of the inner landscape is often worthy of that return.
STRENGTHENING A DREAM
Once the dream has been constructed, and we found ourselves in a three-dimensional environment, it is necessary to do another very important thing, which is to strengthen the foundations of the built dream. The dream in which we find ourselves conscious is very unstable, and it is necessary to carry out specific procedures that will ensure that we walk on it safely and survive long enough for all this to make sense. If we skip this step, a lucid dream will rarely last longer than a minute, in addition to the fact that the imprint of a dream in our mind will be pale, vague, and of very low intensity. Therefore, the first thing a practitioner should do when a vision is formed is to strengthen the dream frame. There are a couple of extremely powerful and simple instructions on how to do this.
The first is certainly touching; we need to move so much to feel every possible detail on and around us. Let us start by touching our whole body – we slide our palms going over the shoulders, head, neck, chest, abdomen, and finally the legs. Then we go to the floor, passing over all the details. We go over every pebble we come across with our fingers. This probing and exploring of details have a penetrating effect on the radiance of astral vision, which will amplify its imprint in our minds in less than 10 seconds in such a way that we will not be able to distinguish from the imprint given to us by the physical eyes in this plane. Also, it is crucial that we actively stare at everything we touch. Such a view must not linger on a single place for more than a moment. We must explore ourselves and our surroundings to the extreme, both by touch and gaze. This cannot be exaggerated; in fact, it can only be done insufficiently persistently, which will always result in weakened dreams and quicker return home. Time is the most precious element in a dream, and here the practitioner is on a seesaw – he must both spend time strengthening and stabilizing a dream so that he can spend more of that time within that same dream. There is significant discomfort in practitioners about this step, who often skip it thinking they will spear the time for some more exciting endeavors, which will be rarely achieved. Without sufficient clarity of the vision, the reactive mind now sees the Aspirant as a foreign body, or some weak or infected part, and is looking for a way to remove him from the tissue of a dream as soon as possible. Once achieved, the feeling of complete clarity is felt plainly and easily, and there should be no indication of anything other than personal conviction and the feeling that clarity is sufficient and that one can progress deeper in a dream. Such a feeling is infallible, and it will be implanted in the practitioner after the first few times of strengthening the dream.
The second method is more of an idea and a principle that explains how we should move through the dream – it is always through action and progress, never stagnation. Such stagnation is fatal; it must neither be of a mental kind – which is perhaps the most destructive to persisting in a dream, the moment when we have no plan of action and when we simply dwell in a dream without any idea of where to go next, nor the physical one – when we simply stop in a dream or hold on looking at something for a few seconds. The stagnation in observation is exceedingly disastrous. This is crucial for any further and more serious dream research – our gaze should never be focused on one point, but continuously and always in motion, staring at everything – just the way our eyes behave during the REM phase. The gaze must always slide and pass over things; any retention of sight leads to the dissolution of the vision. It is like the surface tension allowing the muscles to move on the surface of the water. They must always move so as not to fall under the surface. Any longer holding the gaze on any detail leads to a phenomenon that should definitely be experienced by practitioners – the vision will start to twist, break and very quickly, if we do not move the gaze, we will return to the body, now observing the blackness of the eyelids, without any loss of consciousness. This is an equally valuable experience that must be obtained in order to gain confidence in the importance of constant movement in a dream. Such movement is threefold:
- We must move through mental action, that is, we have to design a plan of action that is best established before we even try a lucid dream the night before. Initially, it can be expressed through 2 or 3 points that a practitioner will remember, or better yet, write it on a piece of paper that will be left next to the bed or under the pillow, and as soon as one point has been accomplished, the next one is to follow. For example, the first point may be projecting oneself inside a futuristic train that will take you to a village at the top of the Himalayas. The second point will be getting off the train and sledding down the slopes of the Himalayas. Of course, the sled will be created as soon as you get off the train by making a projection and action plan before the lucid experience itself. The third point will be an attempt to transmute into the shape of an eagle.
- We must move physically; we must not stand in one place unless a dream is strengthened to such an extent that it can withstand such stagnation. This is, of course, enhanced by time and experience.
- We must move our gaze; we have to look around all over our field of vision. Such shifting of the gaze should not be aggressive and fast but light and steady. The trajectory of such a look is always in spirals and patterns along the vision field, completely relaxed, without any focusing. In this regard, one of the fastest ways to return to the body, if at any time we feel the need to do so, is to move the index finger or palm about 10 centimeters away from the level of our eyes and persistently focus the gaze on a single point. This results in an almost immediate return to the body, in no more than a few seconds.
Therefore, active, lively, and curious movement in a dream is a condition for maintaining our consciousness in an environment of dormant nature. As long as we keep moving, we equally progress through a dream and strengthen it.
The third method is to intentionally fixate our look at a nearby thing, preferably a finger of one hand, and keep staring until the dream begins to fall apart. That feeling is very specific and is very easy to determine once we have carried it out. There is a special kind of sensation that tells us that we will return to the body. In addition to the fact that the dream begins melting and the vision disintegrating, we are equally affected by a specific change of consciousness that occurs at the same time. In this case, we have to get right to that point, by no means beyond it. This usually takes no more than a few seconds before the vision begins to tremble and weaken. When this has happened, what is needed is to abruptly turn our gaze to a completely different side, as far away from the fixed place as possible, moving your head vigorously to the side and fixating your gaze on something else. This drastic change of focus and object of interest seems to have such a purifying effect on the vision, which now appears solid and clear as never before. In other words, an effect is achieved when we look with a binocular with an object that is out of focus, and then, as we move the eyepiece, we suddenly see a crystal clear object of our attention in focus. Before that, a completely vague cloud was observed, and now a planet with quite clear contours is in front of us. This technique carries the danger of over-focusing, which would result in a complete collapse of the dream and return to the body. The personal experience will certainly bear fruit and inform the Aspirant to such an extent that he will intuitively feel the right time to look away.
Finally, there is one form of sleep strengthening, which is an exceptional circumstance. It is the art of translocation, that is, a sudden change of a dream scenario also called teleportation, which has its own laws of when and how it is performed. In the same way, the diversion of the fixed gaze brings stability and clarity to the dream (as in the previous method), so the diversion and displacement from the dream scene also, paradoxically though, brings complete peace and clarity to the new vision. This last method will be explained in detail a few lines later, in the section dedicated to the ability to translocate, i.e., teleport.
The return to reality is a unique circumstance that has its own laws, and it is necessary to go through it consciously and with care. Upon returning to the body, awareness changes, and if the practitioner is attentive enough, he will notice a valuable lesson by observing such a change. Returning to the real world initially brings disappointment and a halt in the enthusiasm that is always so characteristic of a lucid experience. However, after the first few experiences, the practitioner will notice that the observation to which the dream is transformed, giving way to the blackness of eyelids, is very beneficial while not losing consciousness. Such a return to the waking state is part of the same whole being of the Aspirant, and it would be unfair to reject that period just because it prevents us from exploring dreams further and deeper. The dream contains the value in its entirety, with both frameworks that need to be conscious and carefully followed, by no means accidentally or as a consequence of luck. Both the beginning and end of a dream must be awaited like a goddess, carefully and by no means timidly, with attention and delight, by no means randomly wandering around.
The practitioner will notice that the urge to return to physical reality is a shadow that will accompany him during every moment of his lucid experiences, and that shadow will never stop stalking him. Increasing the clarity of a dream is one of the most effective ways to alleviate this urge, but it certainly cannot wholly deprive it. There is another good trick – during the last moments of a dream scene that will begin to disintegrate, we find an object that is at hand, anything that we can touch and hold on to that object, we feel our palms across it in the same way we have created our vision by touching. This will be like an anchor that prevents our boat from wandering before the onset of a terrible storm. We must do our best to hold on to this lighthouse in this calamity and hurricane of awakening. It is even better if our palms are crossed over that object, just as we did initially in the void, invoking vision. There is a certain chance that the whole urge to return to waking consciousness will pass and that we will still be in the dream scene, holding on to that object. After this, you should immediately increase the clarity of a dream until the maximum intensity of vision has been achieved, and only then to continue with the experience.
RE-ENTERING
As much as a return to wakefulness is inevitable, we must seize that necessity and make the ultimate benefit of it – and that is to separate ourselves from the body once more, as soon as we have returned. This is a crucial, so important habit that needs to be established in the same way as the habit of waking up without movement. This way, we will not limit ourselves to a few minutes of lucid experience because each return to the body resets that phantasmagoric dial, and we can continue where we left off. It is enough to think about the location and place where we last returned to the body. Nevertheless, we have to be quite fast because the possibility of such a return disappears very quickly. This is an essential need and importance to adopt this dream re-entering mechanism right at the beginning and to relate it to each of our lucid experiences. It must be imperative that immediately upon returning to the body, the immediate action must be re-emerging from the body by merely rolling out to the side. This movement will be much easier to pull off, without extra effort and entering sleep paralysis because we are already in an ideal state. Merely imagining a rolling motion to the side is quite enough to get out of the body in just a few moments and continue where we left off. As we gain more experience, we will be able to return many more times that, in the end, the whole night will be full of lucid outings and entrances, which will make this whole adventure more meaningful. But it is quite apparent that there are extremes in this and that we will not be able to return at some point. In a similar way to the feeling of returning to the physical plane, which is obtained unmistakably and always accurately, so will the feeling of ending be an actual and definite end. No matter how hard we try in that phase, it will only be impossible to fall asleep again. That moment must be included in the practitioner’s experience, who will recognize it and, with joy and gratitude, set out to record his experience immediately. Such a record is like a record of a dream – a very clear memory of a dream after only 10 minutes can only be a slight hint, while in an hour, it will completely disappear from our mind.
GOLDFISH
There is one form of sleep that resists the manifestation it otherwise has. It does not have an introductory empty phase of nREM that lasts for about 90 minutes after we have fallen asleep, which allows the effect of the affirmation to be more penetrating and stronger etched in our minds, making motionless awakenings happen much easier and more frequent. It is a midday nap, in which we enter directly into a dream, or REM phase, soon after we have fallen asleep. There are several factors that make this possible, but we will stick to a general statement that is very easily verifiable – indeed, every time we fall asleep in the afternoon, we start dreaming very quickly, while waking up very heavy and drowsy – even more sleepy than before our midday nap. These are all indications that the mechanism of noon sleep is different from the evening, natural sleep. It can be said that the afternoon nap is similar to the one after waking up after 6 hours of sleep to take a break and go back to bed. It is quite a similar mechanism – affirmation seems to multiply the chances of waking up after a nap without moving and opening our eyes. Here, the ease of falling into sleep paralysis is exceptional. Also, this period is ideal for the Body of Light technique, which will be explained later.
All in all, trying lucidity during an afternoon nap is ideal if we wake up earlier in the morning than we usually do and stay awake until lunch. The ideal time frame for trying lucid dreaming in this way is a little after lunch, between 3 pm and 5 pm. We will try everything the same as if we woke up with an alarm after 6 hours of sleep and spent some time out of bed. We lie down in bed during a nap attempt, making the affirmation that we will remain still with eyes closed after waking up. As soon as we have woken up, even if we move and open our eyes, there is a great chance that we will slip into sleep paralysis much easier. Upon waking from a midday nap, the Aspirant should remain as calm and immobile as possible, imagining a phantom head movement. He will often be convinced that he is too awake and that it is almost impossible to fall into a lucid dream from that wakefulness, but let him persevere in making a phantom head movement for at least 1 minute at all costs. The vast majority of cases are that at some point, he will suddenly slide into sleep paralysis from where he will quickly catapult himself into a lucid dream, in the ways already explained. However, it should be noted that in case of success, the next instance of evening sleep is quite disturbed and that insomnia is very much possible until late hours.
Like any benefit, this one has its drawbacks, too – a lucid experience triggered by a nap is short-lived; the easier it is to fall into a lucid dream, the harder it is to survive in such a dream. A lucid dream realized during a nap is usually very easy to realize; it is short-lived and very intense, making it ideal for beginners, but it can rarely bring valuable and penetrating experiences later, precisely because of its short duration.
ACTION PLAN
The plan of action is the only and exclusive pillar of this whole temple; the entire lucid dream is a projection and a reflection of the will and intention, whether it is expressed well before the dream or at the very moment of the decision within the dream. The earlier it is expressed, the easier it will be performed, which is paradoxical. Fresh ideas have no support in a dream, and such plans are fragile and tend to collapse. We will really witness that even some of our ancient memories or desires have clear contours in a dream and that it is challenging to get out of a scene that came to mind many decades ago when we were children. Each of us had a specific place or fantasy that was the home of our childhood hero. If we make a plan before the projection to find ourselves, for example, in the fairy garden we dreamed of as children, we will quickly and easily come to such a scenario, from which we will find it quite difficult to leave or change it once we have entered it. It is utterly irrelevant whether we will reach it by a tactile strategy or by a location change technique such as teleport. What we will certainly notice is that such a scenario is particularly clear and solid. No matter how many years or decades have passed since our first conception, it seems that all these past years have acted as additional mortar to bond the material of such a dream.
It can be said that the only element that keeps the dream from falling apart is our motive to progress in the dream; what keeps the contours of the dream together is only our Will to move in the dream. However, such a set will not be strong enough if we do not infuse it with an additional research element, and that is always a projection that we have formed the night before lucid dreaming. As we mentioned earlier, we must always be in motion, not only physical but also mental; it is a mental attitude based on fulfilling the wishes of dreamers, to get to specific points, and to move on to another immediately after the previous one has been realized. Practically speaking, it is best to write down these points on a piece of paper from a notebook that is used just for that (like a sticker for daily tasks), which we will put under a pillow or on a night-table next to the headboard. We need to write 2 points at the beginning, and later 3 or at most 4, depending on the experience in lucid dreaming. More points than this introduce confusion and stagnation because we will need our attention – which causes a return to such undesirable wakefulness. For a start, let these points be realistically achievable things, which excite you at that moment; your first flight above the clouds, your first invocation of a particular being, your first teleportation. Later, make an abstraction of your dream and enter points that go beyond your reach: a dream within a dream, compressing time, prolonging lucid experience, abstract meditation, exploring and talking with deep, personal, unconscious structures, healing mechanism, fulfilling and manifesting desires on the material plane. You must fulfill these points in your dream in the same order as you wrote them. The action plan should begin realizing the moment we have increased the clarity of sleep to the maximum; if by any chance you are not aware of the order of the points themselves, realize the first one that your memory has shed light upon. There must be no waiting or stagnation in this, which is the greatest enemy of the lucid experience, as we already mentioned earlier.
SCENE CHANGE
Changing the scene – translocation, that is, teleportation, as some practitioners prefer to call this ability, is one of the main ways a practitioner frees himself from the projection of a dream, in which he is only a participant in an already prepared play. Within that play, he is just an actor who, no matter how important his role is, is nevertheless just a gear envisioned and agreed upon, one of many meaningful levers within a dream. Using this ability, a practitioner erases the foundation on which the dream program is based and sets up completely new commands on his own. Such an endeavor has its advantages but also its drawbacks, and it is necessary to approach this mechanism very meticulously.
The dream is an augmented reality; it relies on it but does not depend on it. It tickles the reality, daring and provoking it. It is just a stimulus looking for a reaction – an itch that automatically creates a scratching movement. It really just leans imperceptibly and romantically, without asking. It has its rules, where our shadow implements and determines laws and conditions. We live in that sphere, and we are free, as long as we do not violate the principles of that world. We are free to do everything inside that cage, except for one thing – go over its boundaries. Lucidity itself, our very consciousness within a dream, is viewed by our mind as the only phenomenon to which it expresses enmity, relentlessly hunting to expel it like a thorn from its body, as soon as possible and as ruthlessly as possible. Every dream has its need; it is both the cause and the consequence of the conditions around it. The reality of the morning and a whisper of tomorrow are the perimeters that affect it, making this world subject to these points. Although we are completely free to do chaotic things within it, we are an entirely predictable category that is framed by what our mind calls “reality” in the agreed language. Getting out of the dream scene is an impossible feat like quitting work even though we have children to support, traveling around the world when we are scheduled to get married, or buying a new car while applying for a mortgage. In fact, our whole life is a much more limiting phenomenon than our dream, and no matter how much we are unaware of ourselves in a dream, that “self” is too often the reality of everything that is needed for such a limitation and restriction. We are “free” in a dream, simply because we are not “we.”
Our reactive mind is accustomed to setting laws within a dream in the same way that politicians do in the physical world. At elections, it is not important whom we vote for, but who counts the votes. Therefore, it is not a question of whether we can circumvent the rules, but how to circumvent them. Everything that is illogical within reality is real and logical within a dream; we must think with a mind that is not ours, that belongs to “no one.” We have to pretend to play by the rules of a game that has never been played before, by the rules which have never been established before.
The only way for a dream to progress is for a practitioner to progress through the dream. Without a dreamer, a dream is an entirely meaningless phenomenon. Without a dreamer, there is no dream; that is the whole point of the REM phase, which in all its brevity has streets that always lead outside the scope of the dream. In these passages and canals is the whole interest of our art, in following these tributaries of the Selfness. The only way to reach them is abstractness and illogicality in the usage of paths that do have neither a sign nor a label. For a lucid dream, this is exactly the idea of translocation, i.e., teleportation. Translocation is any change in a dream scenario that is fast enough for the reactive mind to respond by setting up and replacing it with a new one; we will reach the realm between dreams, the realm between worlds, and thus gain a considerable advantage over the reactive mind which is now unable to prepare laws concerning a point which has completely lost its dimension and position in its system of control. That is quite enough time for a practitioner to see the bottom in all that depth, noticing a starfish he has been seeking so persistently, or treasure or a sunken ship with the map of his quest.
In order to make a successful shift from a dream scenario that has already been constructed by our reactive mind with quite solid foundations, we must forget about the corridors and all the logical exits from such a building; our whole neighborhood, including a doorman on the ground floor, are now against us, and our mind will pull the dreamer out of the dream after every logical attempt to abandon the established habit, bringing him back to reality. It is the last defense that has no counterpart in the practitioner’s life. That is all we try to prevent – and the methods for doing so are nebulous and illogical – all that our minds simply cannot define as methodological constants on the basis of which it could produce an antidote.
First and foremost: We need to define our motive for teleportation. If we look at a lucid dream as an area of very short duration, where every second is subordinated to a goal that must frame every lucid attempt, such action saves a great deal of time. For the first minute or two, we will certainly get lost in babbling in the darkness of the void until we have obtained a vision and attempting to maximize the clarity of the dream. Only then can we start our exploration. If performed correctly, teleport seems shocking to the mind in a way that must now create one new reality and its laws from scratch, thus losing a significant portion of energy and attention which was intended for the dreamer. By teleporting, two crucial things are being attained. The first, which we have already said, is precious time saving because the practitioner has come directly to the area that he imagined to serve him for manifesting his action plan. And second, it is with this escape from the primary location that the practitioner will gain great clarity – which in turn will contribute to his lengthy stay in such a new scene. But as much as the practitioner has experienced the clarity of the new astral harbor after teleportation, he should certainly determine that clarity by touching, gazing, and shifting his focus in the same way as he strengthened the primary vision from the void. As for the methods themselves, there are a lot of different techniques; some will be a complete success to one practitioner, while others will fail. Over time, it can happen that old methods no longer respond appropriately and that we have to change them. We will therefore list many different things, which will first of all show what the logic of such escape is, and how the methods that lead from the dream region are to be constructed. Once again, to successfully use teleportation, we must make sure that the level of clarity is raised to the highest possible level – even partial clarity will lead to the collapse of a dream and return to wakefulness.
The condition for successful teleportation is a strong desire to leave the current location and reach the desired destination. Such a heated thought should be in our mind for only a few moments, after which we start with the technique of travel itself. It is a good idea to say aloud the destination, which then primarily affects the flow of astral vision. Every word spoken in a dream will be much different than on the physical plane because the organs in charge of the speech process are simply not used. We have no tongue, no lungs, no breath, no vocal cords in our dream – and yet our mind foresaw the reality in which these organs exist because it is accustomed to it. Therefore, the use of words in a dream will play a brilliant role of a mold into which we will pour forged Will. Later, we will notice a remarkable application of a spoken word to the method of invocation in a dream. After enflaming ourselves in our intention towards a new destination and having uttered it in a dream clearly and loudly, we begin to rotate around our axis. Such movement can be accompanied by raising the arms at shoulder height, whereby the rotation should be accelerated to such an extent that the sketches and contours of the primary location in the dream begin to disappear. Such a move will be accompanied by a tremendous change in the consciousness of a practitioner; the whole movement should last from 5 to 10 seconds, certainly no more than that, after which we will stop abruptly and aggressively at one point. With a little effort and practice, we will reach the desired location. The teleport technique itself rarely brings success in the first few times. However, a practitioner should by no means try this thing twice in a row; in a similar way as his attempts at lucid dreaming must not be made day after day, so the teleportation technique should be applied not more than once in two days. More than this will lead to a habit that is a mortal enemy in lucid dreaming. Every habit leads to a system and predictability, logic, and mold, according to which our living spirit simply has no understanding or tolerance, now that it is realized in its natural environment.
The second method is a bit more complicated and involves the flying technique, which will certainly be explained in more detail later. The beginning of this technique is the same as in the past one – in fact, every change of location by teleporting always starts that way: a fervent desire for a location with a clear knowledge of where we want to go, after which we pronounce the location. We start flying high immediately after this, without looking down – the condition for this technique to succeed is to keep our eyes high above us all the time, exactly in the direction of our flight. Such a flight should be fast and powerful, like a catapult. After firing into the heights, we start slower descending during which we will land at the location we aspired to. It is this diversion of gaze that is the most important mechanism for constructing a new reality in a dream, which, in a similar way to shifting gaze has a very important place in the phenomenon of lucid dreaming. Our gaze equally holds the dream together, participates in its duration, conditions the existence of the whole projection and architecture of the dream. The gaze in a dream is like a breath in our lungs – it must always be replenished; it constantly makes the lungs active. This movement of lungs is a condition of our life and the whole mechanism of life, from the smallest cell in the body to the phenomenon of consciousness. In the same way, our gaze must constantly shift; it must constantly move and follow the enthusiasm of a practitioner who willingly progresses in his dream, not staying in any place longer than a moment.
Both of these methods are invasive and abrupt and will take a long time to simply take effect. It may be that the following technique will be much more effective than these two mentioned above – milder and much closer to the logic and nature of the dream itself which is very easy to achieve even with very inexperienced Aspirants. It takes a little more time to perform it, but the conscious loss of that time in a dream is certainly better than the complete collapse of a dream, which earlier methods will surely cause at the beginning of lucid training.
This method uses specific cunning together with the resources of the dream itself, which represent all objects in the dream that can be used as a portal or connection with the desired destination. For this occasion, any door in a dream, window, or even a mirror can be used as a passage; what is important is to use them properly. Suppose we find ourselves in a dream where we are on the street; certainly, the nearest possible door will be a few dozen steps away. What is important is the very approach to such a door, once we have achieved maximum clarity of the astral vision and decided to move away from the current dream scenario. We must not rush toward that door. We must not arouse the suspicion of that dream that we want to leave in any way. On the contrary, we have to walk towards them with complete naïve curiosity – “Hey, look at this door, I’m really interested in what’s behind it,” or “They are very nicely made, I really want to know who lives inside, maybe it’s someone I know?” The sleep mechanism has set them up for just that reason – because it wants to open them up to the path that the mind has already charted. In fact, the whole of our movement in a dream must be out of naïve expectation – we must never announce the plan of what we are about to do – because our actions are mostly treacherous toward the dream projection, and our mind will reveal our true intention by our actions – which will then start raising the immune system toward our lucid consciousness, and completely collapsing our dream thus returning us to the waking state. The whole motive of every movement, our every step inside a dream must be easy, completely relaxed, without any emotions or inner mental noise. The ultimate goal here is an expectation, not a desire. We must expect something behind the door. We must never desire something behind that door. We must move through the dream completely naively and childishly; this is perhaps the most important tactic for lucid dreaming instructions. Everything we do further in the dream is based on this attitude of expectation, rather than fascination. Expectation, not fascination. “Hey, I saw my brother behind this door. Let me say hello to him, will I?” Like Alice in Wonderland: “Hey, there is a white rabbit in a suit, that is peculiar, let me follow it.” Precisely that is the spirit we are looking for. When we approach the door, naively pretending to expect something behind it, a critical moment in the teleportation action is about to happen. We have to merge the idea of that door with the idea of the destination itself very quickly; this is most easily done by simply saying the destination aloud, as in earlier cases, or by drawing a symbol reminiscent of the destination with your finger on the door itself. Drawing symbols with your finger especially refers to entering the Tarot card, Tattvas, elemental or planetary realms. Finally, the whole procedure ends with a completely banal action – we must never open the door frontally which would prevent the scene from changing and allow the defense system to keep us in our current location. Opening the door from the front will invoke an automatic mechanism that will project behind the door something that the reactive mind wants to show us, behind which will be a completely expected corridor – all but not the new reality we want to reach. Therefore, our movement must be as cunning as fast; we will open the door but from behind, turning our backs. We will hold one hand behind our backs and touch the handle to open it without looking at the scenario behind the door. Once we have opened the door (which will always be unlocked by unofficial lucid rules, in the same way that turning on a light switch in a lucid dream almost never brings light), we will take a step back by going through it, doing everything with our back turned. Still not looking back, we will close the door – this movement is extremely important in consolidating the new reality we want to reach. Only then should we turn around. The whole mechanism of teleportation and change of location is hidden in that turn and in that action that lasts less than a few moments; in fact, everything before that was just preparation and warm-up for such a simple, illogical and banal act. In this turn, we will move away from the dream scene. When we stop, there will be a whole new landscape in front of us – the landscape we intend to appear in. It should be noted that opening the handles and calling the elevators in a dream always change the consciousness extremely, especially when they are done in the void phase. However, the Aspirant must be careful with elevators and know how they should or should not be used, which will be discussed later.
TAROT, ELEMENTAL KINGDOMS, EXPLORING OTHER LIVES, AND TIME TRAVEL
In our art, there are planes that draw from the supreme archetypes and can always be a valuable destination for a lucid dream. Since their research is very extensive, it is important to get to those planes soon after we get the vision in order to use the remaining time as much as possible. In addition to drawing symbols on the door in a dream and the mechanism of reverse passage through the door, there is another way we can get to a certain plane, which requires a little more experience; but certainly, this way of traveling will be encouraging for a practitioner, as it saves time – one of the most important instances of a lucid dream. Instead of looking for a door to draw a symbol of a Tarot card, element or planet on, why not look for a deck of Tarot cards in the right pocket of your pants once you find yourself in a dream? Or, maybe it is much easier to get to Manhattan if we use a postcard of that place as a portal from our right pocket? If I tell you that you will always find a Tarot card or a postcard with the desired destination in your right pocket inside the dream, then that is quite a sufficient projection that will work forever. It is enough to express a simple intention before going to bed for this, and it will be automatically created the moment you look for a card in your right pocket next time you found yourself in a dream. The very movement of putting your hand in the pocket will project the desired Tarot card at that same moment. Now take out the Tarot card, throw it on the floor, and jump into it. This is always such a great way to travel fast.
As for the elemental kingdoms, you can do what you like, but be sure to establish the habit of seeking advice and instruction from such a realm in the form of the guide. The ways of invoking in a dream will be discussed later; it is the same kind of cunningness present in teleporting through the door.
By exploring other lives, we mean exploring past or even future incarnations and other forms of life – what is it like to be an animal, what is it like to be a bird? Each model will have the advantages of having such a shape. Therefore, flying will not be a problem at all if you take the form of an eagle or a seagull, and it is a completely magnificent experience. Imagine other shapes with other animals, all of which can be valuable experiences.
Time travel is always a form of translocation, so any door can be used for this – all that matters is the intention and that we say the year or date instead of the location before we open the door backward and step through the past or future. It is exactly the same mechanism, and in a dream, it almost always takes the shape of phantasmagoria rather than something that the Aspirant could explore more seriously. But it is undoubtedly useful to explore past or future incarnations, where the unconscious mind, if anywhere else, will at least have its wide range of manipulation – precisely the type we need. Such manipulation is always an advanced version of psychotherapy; the journey through time and into the past incarnation is always and in every respect a journey into one’s own present and the network of one’s own neurosis. As a code, you can draw your date of birth on the door, with an uttered wish to visit the previous incarnation. Experiences of this kind are always very emotional and powerful, sometimes leaving the Aspirant to ponder the message for a long time, but each practitioner must keep in mind the message of his soul, which is primarily emotional content. A wise magician will get deep psychological insight from this, rather than a historical fact that might seem accurate and seldom yield anything useful to the Aspirant himself.
RITUALS AND MEDITATIONS
As much as an attempt to Rise on the Planes from Liber O is mainly in vain if practitioners carry it out from the physical plane, so much its performance from the position of lucid dream yields an entirely brilliant experience. There is nothing more valuable and inspiring for an Aspirant’s being than the urge to go up once he has found himself inside a dream. With such ascent, we simply fly with all our might, fixing the point in Nadir above us, further and higher, highest and furthest, the more we can embrace that height, the better. Such ascension is exceptionally irritating to our consciousness, which is so altered by this trajectory that words could even hardly describe such a change. It is a great fortune that this method is so simple in its instructions that Aspirants have no choice but to follow and realize it in their lucid dreaming as one of the points of their action plan.
Also, rituals do not need to be performed at all in the form we perform them on the physical plane. Instead of uttering and performing, all we need in a lucid dream is to remember some past performance and focus on the very form of the ritual without performing it. It is enough to vibrate one single divine name being aware that one wants to invoke the full realization of the ritual, and that is quite enough. Just remembering a ritual in a dream is enough to perform it instantly. Our attention and time do not have the same meaning we are used to within the physical plane. Therefore, failure, decline, or poor concentration are simply not elements that exist in a lucid dream. There is no need to invest an effort to imagine the lines along which the pentagram burns; if there is a point in our action plan to perform a Ritual of the Pentagram, it will be enough to recall that point of the plan in mind and draw a pentagram with our hands in the air. To our astonishment, the air will automatically originate a pentagram in the desired color, flame, or light, just as we would with a marker on paper. It is ultimately better to invent your own word and your own magical movement, which, when performed after a few moments, evokes all the effect of a complete ritual, even though it lasts for hours in this world. We need to know that “performance” does not exist in a dream, there is only realization, and performance is a clumsy expression of our Ego that gives itself justification and excuse in time and space on the physical plane. In a dream, there is no coming but being; there is no performance but realization. There is no time but a moment. That is why a lucid dream is short-lived because it is not meant to last – it is reserved for our mind accustomed to using this corrupt term in its search for light – the one that has been within it all the time. The ultimate attainment within a lucid dream, as in fact in this plane, requires a single moment – that is why a lucid dream has a very limited and short period of time – because that period is actually more than enough for our Selfness and for what we really need.
The Middle Pillar exercise has a completely different shade in a lucid dream; simply, the line of holiness descends and is physically felt the moment we begin to vibrate, and so it is always easiest and most beautiful to vibrate pure syllables and play with that twisting light all around us, spinning that light and enjoying its beneficial effect on what we know as the body at that moment. Liber Samekh is always so fantastic to perform, it is enough to recall the whole ritual in quick strokes briefly, and once we are done with the recollection, we will notice that we have completely gone through it, in the same way as if we had performed it. Real and unreal performance has the same monetary value in a dream. You set the right boundaries with your mind and your understanding of the dream itself – in what you think and want to be possible or not.
There is one brilliant trick that always grows into a model of the most profound meditation in a dream: it all boils down to inhaling as much as you can in a lucid dream while expanding your consciousness everywhere beyond the frame of the observed Universe with each atom of inhalation beyond those limits. You certainly do not have lungs in a dream; your breath will be endless; breathe and travel the entire Universe with that single breath. There will be no end to that inhalation, and at some point, the consciousness will start to change as you realize that you have infinitely large lungs that do not have an inhalation limit. In the end, you will not expand your lungs, but your mind. At some point, you will find yourself in a more sophisticated version of the void in which you found yourself at the very beginning of a lucid experience. But this void is a more perfected and improved version of this place than it is when we find ourselves in it at the beginning of a lucid experience. It is a living universe, and indeed – you will find yourself in a quiet place in the midst of the blackness of a multitude of galaxies. There will be star clusters all around you, and the place where you will be will radiate completely authentic and special force. This is a trick that throws the mind out of a lucid dream, which, although part of it, now becomes everything but its appearance – the mind will become a stimulus to the Universe. This swapping of roles will happen while we are doing a completely meaningless thing that the mind is simply not used to, and that is to breathe without interruption and without the limits of our physical lungs, because simply – we do not have lungs in a dream, as much as we do not have the body. Such an endless breath seems to leave the mind stunned and utterly powerless at the idea of cosmic expansion, and at one point, it simply bursts, allowing the Selfness to spread through stellar infinity. Such inhalation and expansion have a somewhat similar effect to the method of Rising on the Planes explained earlier – which is actually a poorer version of this trick.
INVOCATIONS AND SUMMONINGS
Invocation methods contain the same cunning mechanism we use to change the location by teleportation. In this method, the dream must be strengthened as much as possible; once maximum clarity has been achieved, we need to pronounce the name of the entity we want to invoke loudly. But this whole act contains the last, crucial move of turning our backs after saying the name – and noticing the intelligence in front of us. This move contains exactly the same mechanism as teleporting through a door after stepping through it backward and turning around seeing a new scenario. The moment we utter the name, our mind has already built a projection behind us – in fact, it is a sophisticated miniature teleport that takes place within the same scenario. The turn behind our back should be done slowly; it acts on a change in consciousness and will actually confirm the Will that was expressed in words, that is, the name of the entity. This fantastic 180-degree movement is actually a movement that takes us into a whole new world, except that there is no interruption of the scene, as is the case with teleportation. This is a subtle, and above all, a cunning way to stay in the same plane but change the location anyway. This turning movement almost seems to need amplified music, something similar to the cinematic experience, as if a musical crescendo is happening while increasing tension, and when we finally turn around, we see the main actor in the film. In fact, pronouncing a name does not invoke a being; it is rather that graceful, slow turn behind our back. Pronouncing a name only warms and directs the Will, which creates a completely different reality in that short turn in which it equally inserts the desired being.
The act of recalling oneself from the past or the future is quite a charming event; in this way, we invoke ourselves in the same way as we invoke any other being. Talking to oneself always grows into a precious experience and a lesson. All entities are apostles of an unconscious nature and have the role of guides and narrators of dormant currents of magicians – you can use your creativity to think of forms of entities that contain future lessons – from repressed emotions, fears, unresolved events to unfulfilled desires or completely human and warm conversations with people we are no longer able to talk to. But the Aspirant must know that every dialogue in a dream is actually a monologue of the Self and that every question is actually a reshaped answer, which we already know perfectly well deep within ourselves.
ENOCHIAN SYSTEM
The method of summoning Enochian intelligences is exactly the same as invoking any other entities with a turn behind your back, but here it can be completed by reading the appropriate keys just before bedtime. The most effective would be to apply this method with interrupted sleep after 5–6 hours of sleep. The keys are read exactly in that break, once the alarm has woken us up for the first time, after which we go to bed with the affirmation that we will remain motionless and continue to work in exactly the same way. Also, instead of saying the keys in a dream, which would take too much time and concentration, we can pull out a very handy trick. If, for example, we need the 4th and 8th key, then we will imagine two pills of different colors in the left pocket, which have numbers written on them. We will first swallow the pill with the number 4 written on it, and then the pill with the number 8; it will instantly create the same effect as if we had read the calls, and that effect will be felt immediately after we have swallowed the second pill, with a very clear sense of invoked force. Now, pronouncing the name of intelligence will be accompanied by the force that will make the experience even stronger and longer.
HEALING AND RECOVERING
Certainly, a dream is an ideal ground for triggering unconscious energy currents, which equally construct the whole scenario and appearance of a dream, and it can be said that manipulating such energy with a simple effort of Will is ideal in various methods by which we can infuse the same energy into our own body. We will only mention the beneficial effect of completely ordinary actions such as performing the Middle Pillar within a dream or an endless breath through which we breathe light, which can endow the whole next day with completely fantastic and incredible energy. Also, try pressing your index finger against a painful or sensitive spot, or do one simple and infinitely effective trick: bring your index finger closer to your mouth and blow into it, as if blowing into a cigar, wanting it to begin to smolder with a blazing flame. Now stick such a burning finger into an ill or weak place and spread heat and light all over it. Also, breathe through the sore spot, imagining that all the breath is flowing from that direction, infusing freshness and health.
PERSONAL TEMPLE
This segment of work is, in my opinion, perhaps the most magnificent, and in my case, it has shed a whole new light on the region of the lucid experience. I discovered the whole thing by accident, in the early days of my research into lucid dreaming, as a boy. I have always been lucky about lucid dreaming, and I have been able to dream within a dream since I became aware of myself, and being able to retain complete consciousness equally when entering and exiting sleep. Sometimes in my dream, I thought about what to do when I wake up, and already at the age of 13 or 14, there were generally no overwhelming secrets for me about lucid dreaming. It was then that I began to experiment with the phenomenon of consciousness in sleep; with the phenomenon of time, I began to experiment with staying in a dream for as long as possible, with psychoanalysis within a dream, as well as performing basic rituals and meditations in it. I often tried to break my own boundaries within a dream, where I was constantly setting interesting tasks to fulfill and points around which to perform experiments. At that time, in addition to my lucid experiments, I was doing an intensive exercise in which I would create an imaginary personal library with books to read about my being, as well as my past and future lives. I found this exercise in a small book on reincarnation, rather shallow but with instruction on the creation of an inner astral library. I really liked this exercise since I had extremely strong visualization. As time went on, I incorporated my elements into that exercise and improved it with my personal changes and details. Also, as I got even more skillful in visualization over time, I did the whole exercise with open eyes, completely losing the feeling of looking with physical sight. I soon expanded that library to the whole temple; every day, I walked through visualization of my temple and added new details each time. I drew a plan of such a temple on paper, with all the rooms and corridors. The temple was a giant, black cube in the desert, without reflection, typically astral in appearance. It had rooms for different kinds of works and rituals. I performed this exercise every day, walking through and enjoying the temple, and for some reason, I found something special and important in it, which would turn out to be true later. I performed this exercise for 2 months in the beginning, after I had expanded my astral temple, all in all – 4 to 5 months of total work. And then I completely forgot about it. Puberty and progress in other disciplines simply did its thing, and this exercise got inevitably forgotten. At the age of 19, I bought my first major wooden library. I was immensely fascinated by it because I already had a lot of books on the floor and in boxes, no more space to keep all those great books – especially the ones I bought as a boy and which were pretty naive and intended for initial work. One day, as I arranged the books on my new shelves with great enthusiasm, I found again a small booklet in which I first came across an exercise of the inner library. Although I expanded it considerably and infused a lot of personal elements, this booklet instantly produced a wonderful memory for me of the period when I did this practice every day, which marked my entire spiritual work during that time. And then an idea came to me – to project myself into the scenario of my inner temple in the next lucid dream, the way I imagined it then, and which I can reproduce in detail even today. Already the first evening, I made an action plan with a trip to my personal inner temple as the first point of the plan. Somehow, as if I knew that endeavor would push my research in a completely unpredictable direction, I really felt the difference between that idea and hundreds of others, equally interesting points of my action plans in lucid dreaming. I will remember that night for the rest of my life: I came out of the body in exactly the same way as I used to thousands of times before, finding myself in the void and groping the walls while moving away from my bed. But as soon as I started to touch the walls, I decided to imagine actually crossing over the walls of my temple, and after a few seconds, my hands began to feel completely different material. Now my palms were crossing over polished, cold marble. Then I began to rub my astral hands as if warming them up, at the same time blowing over them. My breath ran over my rubbing palms, painting a whole new reality. After a few moments, reflections of the world and the scene I actually knew very well began to form – and soon, I found myself standing in the center of my old, inner temple, completely speechless before such a level of clarity as never before. In fact, I had a feeling that both dream and wakefulness were only pale memories of this reality that was so much more real than all that. I immediately began to examine the clarity and depth of the vision by staring at one point, expecting the dream to begin to collapse. But the scene remained in place without changing in the least. I was shocked by the firmness of experience; I pinched myself feeling real pain. Without any doubt, this was obviously a completely different level of a dream, deep as well as wide. My consciousness was completely uniquely different; even though it was a lucid consciousness, it was so sharp and focused, without any fear that I would return to the body and without any danger that was always somehow felt in all lucid experiences. I had no feeling that I had to do anything or stay active to survive in my dream. Here, on the contrary, I was completely passive, enjoying every second of my stay in this divine space. That feeling was a special mixture of nostalgic emotions because I imagined all this so diligently and devotedly as a teenager, and now for the first time, I was completely inside my inner temple, knowing all that exercise put a special trail on my being, more valuable than I ever thought it would be.
I came up with a whole new lucid law: when you teleport yourself inside something which exists, and you know it exists, then it will trigger one part of a mind, which will result in a specific kind of lucid dream. On the other hand, when you teleport yourself somewhere which is just in your fantasy, and you know it does not exist in this reality, it will trigger a different part of a mind, so it will result in a lucid dream with quite a different kind of rules. But now, if you do something which is neither of these two, teleporting yourself in a scenery that is really only inside your memory, but remembering an old phantasmagoric and false reality instead of memory which really happened, then your mind will be stunned, blocked to choose which rules and laws will use for creating such a reality, and in all this confusion you will get quite wonderful, miracles kind of lucid dream which will last almost forever and in which you can do whatever you want, with complete control and clarity. That is the whole point of creating your personal temple – its reality is neither-nor. It will be both in fantasy and both in reality. It will be constructed both from remembrance as well as imagination. Moving yourself toward fantasy, which does not exist in reality but exists firmly in your memory, as fake memory – as remembering something which is not real. That is a glitch that can build a whole different lucid experience.
After I explained the short story of my inner temple and the purpose it may have for the Aspirant, I will start from what I have already set as an observation, which is that our personal temple is stationed in a completely different level of dream, a completely different level of consciousness. Staying in it allows for much longer lucidity than any other method, the clarity with which it is reflected in our mind is always of the highest order; everything is so real and solid in it that we will have almost no need to apply any dream deepening techniques. This is a completely exceptional scenario, which we need to build for a while without trying to project ourselves through a dream at all – but only in the imagination, every day for ten to fifteen minutes, imagining walking through a certain place that we would have built in detail beforehand. Before that, let us draw on paper what we want our temple to look like, both outside and inside. Will it be in the Renaissance style, built of wood and old drapery, with a fireplace in the library and candles on the walls? Perhaps minimalist, made of stone and wood, plated with paper walls. Or maybe it will be a futuristic design with a completely fantastic play between light and shadow? In fact, drawing such a temple builds it as much as its visualization; the more we play and fantasize, the more it will be imprinted in mind. I improved my inner temple, inserting rooms and parts that served me to immerse myself deeper and further into parts of my being that I could not assume existed in the least. Certainly, everyone should construct their own temple or inner space; I will describe mine so you might take advantage of some ideas.
In the lower-left corner, as can be seen, there is my room on the physical plane – it borders the walls of my inner temple. The door of my room, if opened with the intention of entering the inner temple, actually opens the door of that temple. It is very important that the whole intention is framed by describing that point in the action plan before a lucid attempt. I additionally inserted this point of contact with my real room; in the beginning, my inner temple had no points of contact with the waking world, and I used to come to it exclusively by teleport – in two ways. The first way was by turning around my axis, while the second was a method of stepping back through the door. However, using the door to enter my inner temple had another thing that was very important – I always drew my personal symbol on the door itself, that is, a code that would unlock the part of my mind reserved exclusively for teleportation to my inner temple. This is a great and original method with only me knowing how to draw that figure, which gave my mind additional legitimacy to establish that temple and give it a completely fantastic meaning within a dream. Only later did I decide to lean the door of my bedroom against the temple itself so that I could project myself within the scenario of the temple already during palpation in the void, which gave me more time – such a precious element in every lucid dream. Thus, I enter the central and most important part of the temple from my room, which is located in the lower-left corner of the map, which is also the largest room in this building. In its center, there is a large circle of work; in the western part, there is a large portal, and in each corner, there is a massive, monolithic supporting pillar. In the middle are large oil lamps that radiate beautiful orange light. This room is used primarily for performing rituals in a dream, also for invocations of intelligences and beings, and a possible quick journey through the portal located on the west wall. From this central ritual room, there are two doors in the middle of the north wall, then one door in the upper corner of the east wall, as well as one door in the south wall – in the lower-right corner of the room. The upper-left door leads into a very small room only with one large spacious bed and torches in the corners. This is a tantric room – having sex in a lucid dream is one of the most beautiful experiences that simply surpasses anything that can be conveyed by words. This room is intended for tantric experiments – the goddess or priestess is invoked by simply saying her name before opening the door. The right door leads to a small hallway at the end of which there is another door, wooden and massive. On the right, hanging torches on the stone wall radiate light. When we walk through this hallway and open the door at its end, we enter a beautiful, large, and spacious garden with beautifully mowed grass on the ground. One can immediately notice two huge old oaks that are home to many fairy and gnome creatures – it is always so wonderful to play with them in the treetops, and it is quite appropriate to change the shape and reduce to the size of an elf for this occasion – which is best achieved in the main central room, in the center of the circle. At the right end of this magical garden, there is a magical observatory that serves both for summoning and long journeys, not only through space but also through time. This garden is especially useful for exercises of flying and moving through a dream without using physical movements – just by focusing your attention on the desired spot, which takes a lot of time to master. The only door on the east wall of the ritual room is in the upper corner, and after we have opened it, we will see a stone staircase leading upstairs. The stairs lead to a T intersection – there is one door at each end of both corridors. The lower, southern room is of regular square shape with a ritual pool, with oil lamps resting in the corners. The pool of radiance in this room serves for complete energy recovery, healing as well as meditation. My body and soul unite in energy waves while resting in this pool; just a few minutes of relaxation in it gives me tremendous strength, and when I return to the physical body – the fatigue that occurs after each lucid dream in this way is almost gone, and I can get up immediately after a lucid dream and start with daily activities – which is almost impossible with the usual lucid experience. This pool also reveals the causes of all bodily problems; it raises awareness of many energetic and emotional blockages. In fact, this pool is filled with a very special substance – it is a matter that is a mixture of light, water, and very mild electricity; staying in it is extremely pleasant and invigorating. If we now turn left on the steps at the T intersection, we will also come across a door behind which there is a very small room, in which there is always a neat bed with a desk across it. The torches are located in the lower left and right corners. This room is always especially important to me, and it serves for contemplation, recording thoughts and ideas, and what is very important – dreaming within a dream. This action always serves primarily to compress time inside a dream, which can sometimes prolong a lucid experience for more than an hour. In exceptionally rare cases, I had the feeling that I was in a dream for several hours, not losing consciousness in the slightest. But this technique and prolonging time also bring impressive clarity of dream, too much clarity even, which is sometimes very difficult to manipulate. This is certainly more than an advanced technique that has no place in this section, for it is in itself contradictory and contrary to many of the suggestions made in this instruction. Finally, the last door in the lower right corner of the ritual room leads into the hallway going down to the library, following the stairs, turning left into a narrow corridor, after which you enter a larger rectangular room. It is all filled with shelves. There are large stone pillars in the corners, while in the center is a large wooden table with a chair. Here I can find all the books that interest me and get various information needed for teleport or invocations of beings. There are also many magical artifacts on the shelves – magic pills and potions that bring abilities and control of flying, summoning, reducing, or shapeshifting. Some potions allow a particular book to be swallowed rather than read – in just a few sips, the entire content of the knowledge in the book instantly expands through my mind, after which I become aware of the lesson contained in the book. This library is the primary and oldest room in my temple, from where I started the construction of this sublime structure.
These are all ideas that I have personally brought into my inner temple, and which contain dream manipulations in a form that will subject my mind to such rules – those that I have actually brought, but that mind cannot comprehend it in that way, and which will obey it, momentarily, like our physical body instantly obeying the force of gravity – in no way doubting it. This temple is so sublime in design and creation that my mind does not realize it actually part of its essential core, and everything in it is made and has its purpose primarily in compressing and circumventing the laws of a lucid dream.
Whether and in what way you will construct your personal inner space in a dream depends exclusively on you, I have pointed out one particular mechanism, and it is up to each practitioner to determine their own style, interior, and exterior, as well as the function of rooms and corridors. You can create a room that will be as vast as the cosmos where you can observe the gnostic mass performed by the Universe itself, with you as a participant in the Eucharist of galaxies and star clusters. You can have one small room where you will keep your personal dragon or a room where you will grow a little black hole. You can do all this in your temple in a blink of an eye; here, all the laws and limits are determined by your mind, and it is solely up to you to decide on how you will deal with it.
THE USE OF SIGIL IN DREAM
The dream is the perfect polygon for the flow of sigils due to the very fact that we are naturally anchored to the region to which they aspire like eels, finally pouring into a source of action that manifests the Will as desire. This place is home to every magic lamp genie, and it is necessary to explain the mode necessary to master to direct this terrible force in the proper way. Every logical and careful handling grounds this force before time, whereby all force is lost and the desire dries up before its realization. What is most important about the sigil is that it must be included in the lucid dream scenario so that the unconscious nature receives it like a molded plant.
My favorite way is to draw a sigil on a piece of paper on which I usually write the points of my action plan and transfer the same piece of paper once when I find myself in a dream scenario by looking for it in the right pocket of my pants. This wonderful movement of putting my hand in my pocket while dreaming always projects what I want to find there. Once I have found a paper with a sigil, I strengthen my vision to the maximum and teleport myself deep into the past, to a bank where I have a private account and a safe as well. I descend into the basements of that bank, walk through giant security corridors, and finally reach the place where my safe is. I open it with a key and put a paper with a sigil in it. Then I go back to the body and get out of the lucid experience, completely forgetting about all of this.
Using the pool of radiance inside my inner temple is also a great thing – after transferring the paper with the sigil into a lucid experience, finding it in my right pocket, I now teleport to my temple and go to the pool room, where that sigil now disappears in the water linking to energies of the cosmos, decomposing in a vast sea of light.
Also, a small meditation room with a bed is great for this – where I place that same piece of paper under the pillow in that room and try to fall asleep inside the dream, implementing the sigil deep within the currents of my unconscious nature.
Or something straightforward: I am flying toward the Sun holding the sigil in my hands. I am flying with all my might toward the center of the Sun where I finally leave the sigil – now letting all the sunlight be colored by the shade of its nature, which shines radiating the whole Earth. As soon as I return to this plane, I observe the Sun and enjoy its rays – and I feel a slight flicker of the sigil in that warmth, feeling it expand and manifest in this Universe.
WIND OF CHANGE
The vast majority of practitioners come into contact with this force sooner or later. It uses a dream as much as our shadow does but differently and more creatively. Everything can happen from a completely ordinary projection. We can find ourselves within a dream, at any stage; a moment before that, an exceptional feeling will flow through our being as if something is going to happen, something like before a scary scene in horror movies is announced by charging the atmosphere with tense music and sound effects – when we all know that something is approaching the protagonist – something very mean. Similarly, a particular change strikes the Aspirant quite suddenly and unannounced in a dream, but instead of him returning to the waking state and the dream collapsing, it seems that the same dream exerts pressure on a dreamer by leading him into a completely new and different scenario without his conscious will. As if some force suspends the entire projection mechanism and plants an experience it considers to have priority in the life of the Aspirant. Such experiences are mostly very vivid and exciting; they often have their own story and knowledge transfer and a message that can be expressed even in a series of projections. Sometimes, such series can last for months, after which they stop for a while, only to return again later. All we can speculate is that these phenomena are manifestations of the Angel within a dream, in the same way that he can act so penetratingly on the physical world, leading us to experiences that we define as synchronicities. But now, in a place so suitable for him, the Angel always finds ways to leave traces in almost every projection that we can follow, and that can lead us to such fantastic and beautiful places. Often there is a sudden change of scenario and the appearance of guides in various forms – after which there is a transfer of certain knowledge or the message left to our soul later for consideration and analysis. In cunning ways, the Angel plants tiny details within a dream, which the reactive mind does not define as a threat because they are too small and hidden the same way we can often find light switches in a copy of our room in a lucid dream, which do not exist on the physical plane, or even whole doors that cannot be found anywhere in a wall of our real house. Quietly and discreetly, all these objects entice the Aspirant’s attention to touch them to escape from a dream scenery. The Angel inserts these small details as shortcuts so we can press them, push them, pull them, reaching a completely different part of the dream – the one that is not projected by the reactive mind. This is actually a tunnel leading from the prison, this is a code that allows the system to be bypassed, and the alarm turned off; long enough that you can get out, short enough not to be noticed. The way we react to such elements is essential; we must not show emotional upset, but a little intrigue in no way whatsoever, but curiosity about what will happen if we, for example, turn on the light switch: “Ah, a switch, my wife did not tell me that she installed it, it is very nice, she got the color right! I wonder if it works?”
FLYING
This is always a favorite ability, even the goal of many lucid movements. In addition to being too often the aspiration of many practitioners, it is just as much the reason for the collapse of a dream, which always occurs simply due to the failure of the mechanisms of projection and the maintenance of consciousness within a dream. The first and most important element that prevents us from flying, or prevents us from flying long enough, is emotional agitation. Simply, this is such a wonderful event that few can remain indifferent in the moment of flight. The pressure and the feeling of speed simply interrupt a dream during the first few flights as soon as we have detached ourselves from the ground and got acceleration. Even when we overcome emotional excitement over time, we will equally witness the collapse of dream during flight – visions weaken in just a few seconds with many experienced practitioners, while flying is impossible for more than half a minute. The main culprit is the lack of the most important mechanism that sustains the lucid experience, which influences the construction of the dream scenario, and that is tactile sensation. From the very exit of the body, the practitioner will find himself in a well-known void, where before he gets any vision, he will have an exclusive sense of touch. Later, the tactile sense will maximize the visual reflection of the dream in your mind; feeling everything around the practitioner will increase the intensity of the vision. But now that he is trying to fly, he will begin to lose the lighthouse that holds him to the dream port, simply because he will not have a fixed position within a dream. For the first time, his arms and legs will have no contact with the ground or walls, and he will begin to disappear from the dream in the same way the vision of a dream came, with the opposite effect. Therefore, the condition for long flying is to rub your hands and touch your elbows, shoulders, and face with your palms actively and carefully for as long as the flight lasts. Or to move the index finger of the right hand over the palm of the left, in the direction of flying, like a miniature joystick – as if directing your own flight in the course of movement of the index finger on the palm. This small detail offers everything so that the dream flight is not doomed to return to the waking state and will ensure that the vision remains solid and stable throughout the flight and after we have landed when it is necessary to strengthen clarity once again by the methods we have stated earlier.
SHADOW
There is a single phenomenon within a dream, common to many practitioners, which has such a specific aura and an extraordinary type of event that begins to twist the overall projection of the dream, like a black hole that attracts and affects the movement of the entire worlds around. It is precisely why this phenomenon is black, like the darkest and most passionate night. It is the shadow experience in our projections that usually occurs just after we leave the body, or even earlier – in the sleep paralysis phase. The appearance of a shadow is always accompanied by the appearance of primordial, horrified, and living fear inside us. It is such specific fear that it seems to have existed longer than we have been alive as if it is the fear of all beings who have walked upon this earth. What we can learn by observing the experiences of practitioners is that the closer we are to the body, the greater the appearance of this fear. It occupies our thinking apparatus and almost entirely directs the projection in its own way. We will repeat what we have stated earlier because this statement is crucial for understanding the phenomenon of shadow in lucid dreaming:
“Indeed, many Aspirants of lucid dreaming find a unique phenomenon that is the same for everyone, and that continues to shock and frighten Aspirants who cannot overcome the specific appearance of the shadow in their experiences for years. This shadow experience, which occurs in its manner of frequency, always brings the ultimate horror, terror, and insurmountable fear into a dream experience where the Aspirant has no control over the projection. Many Aspirants cite this as their worst nightmare, and that shadow usually feeds on their strangest and most ingrained childhood fears, which have such destructive power once they have risen in a lucid dream. But if lucid dreaming brings benefits in anything, it is precisely in the assimilation of this shadow. The very success in lucid dreaming is nothing compared to the experience of assimilating the shadow in a dream – which could be one of the most important undertakings of the Aspirant he may have had before Abramelin once he had found tremendous courage before the projection and managed to present it to himself as the goal of the projection, if he approaches the shadow, embraces it and to feels it illuminate. So little technical knowledge is needed for this, but so much devilish love and courage – the same one that will later take him along the whole of Abramelin operation.”
It is in this phenomenon that we can find such an open action of the Vampire who haunts the Neophyte. The exploration of lucid consciousness now gives this action an altogether clearer nature. It is extremely important for the Neophyte to experience this fear and even work for some time to become aware of such projections within his lucid dream. All he has to do is that during the phantom rocking phase, when he feels that there has been a separation from the physical body, or in the void phase, he simply wants to meet the shadow. This is really all it takes to launch this terrifying experience. The shadow needs intention more than anything, as well as the initial stage of a lucid dream. It is almost impossible to find it when we teleport or after we strengthen our vision.
In practical terms, we can expect the following: after we have found ourselves motionless after waking up, as we begin with a phantom movement or turning our head back, right after a few seconds, we begin to hear buzzing – something like a fan, but on a much subtler level. As we continue with the phantom movement, this sound becomes more and more like a rattlesnake with a specific fear beginning to appear and openly growing in us. That sound is getting louder every second, we now hear a huge, massive body crawling on the floor and that fear growing in us even more. Finally, we roll to the side, coming out of the body, falling from our bed onto the floor, start touching and move away from the body. After obtaining the vision, we find ourselves in the hallway of our apartment. All around us is the twilight, very dim light of the lamps, which prevents us from seeing the whole ambiance clearly. We have a sense of the special weight that this lucid experience radiates, and no matter how hard we try to strengthen our vision and deepen our dream, this feeling of heaviness and darkness is equally present. We continue to hear the sound of something being dragged along the floor coming from the next room and now slowly approaching our position; at the same time, the hissing intensifies. Paralyzing fear overwhelms our being while preventing us from doing anything creatively and escaping this dream scene – every second we give legitimacy to this fear by waiting for it in a daze. The sound is approaching, and we finally notice the shadow at the end of the corridor. We can hardly see anything except that it is colossal. The sound of dragging on the floor becomes even louder – now it is only a few meters away, and we suddenly see a huge creature in front of us, which is as tall as the ceiling – a huge snake almost a meter wide, with black scales that seem to breathe in a demonic way, making a suffocation-like sound. Instead of a snake’s head, there is a head of an old man with slicked back black hair on top of it, with curvy eyes and an open mouth, with that monstrous sound of the hissing of a rattle and a subtle scream coming out of it. As if it is a completely independent entity, the fear in us grows and controls our reactions, making the experience completely passive on our part. That horrifying creature begins to hover over us, and the eyes of that serpent-grandsire are now staring at us, and instead of hissing, it now begins to scream and howl. Then, the whole vision disappears, and we return to the physical plane, not losing consciousness but equally holding that fear in us in the same way as it was a few moments ago. The experience of the fear that dominated our being is still in us, long after the dream. We have the impression that the whole next day is colored by that terror.
This would be an improvised event and a brief description of a shadow experience. It really takes a very long time to overcome such fear and approach this being. But the experience of communication and open acceptance of such a creature is one of the most authentic experiences an Aspirant can ever have. Hugging him, inasmuch as it is simply impossible as a choice in those moments, makes us experience something we will wear throughout this whole quest of ours. Such a victorious decision will give us strength and direction more than all the meditations and rituals we have performed so far. This simple movement will open more light than darkness and fear the shadow possessed at first. Because in the end, it will truly be a creation of light, while fear is only our projection towards that light. The fear of darkness is disturbing indeed, but the fear of light and fear of truth is paralyzing and terrifying, so much that it stops entire Universes in its movement.
Saying what a shadow is and what are the benefits of working with it is as poisonous as a discussion about the nature of angels and about right or wrong rituals. Simply and very concretely, the only measure in all this is our experience, so all that can be said about it is to get in touch with the shadow within a lucid dream at all costs. How this experience will be embodied in our lives will depend solely on ourselves.
It is necessary to say something more about fear, which is a very common occurrence in sleep paralysis. It can appear independently of the shadow; still, it is made up of the same part of our being as the shadow. Inexperienced practitioners may fear that they will not return to the body, that they will die trapped between worlds, that they will go insane, or have a heart attack. These are unrealistic and utterly phantasmagoric urges that always occur when we turn our attention to the side effects of getting out of the body instead of the action plan we made before the projection. These side effects can have an infinite number of different forms and combinations: from sound distractions and hallucinations to thought creations that simply deviate from the exit procedure to visual flashes of light, color, and form in our field of vision. Such distractions are really diverse, and they all bring the practitioner to a region that is neither there nor here. Neither in a dream nor in reality, and it is in this area that our boyish fears and phobias get the opportunity to march our lives again for the first time in so many years, dominating again over our thinking apparatus, which is completely blocked in front of them. This re-survival of hellish horrors is an extremely interesting experience, and it can be said that all childhood fears are very close to our Pure Will – only if we approach them frontally, hugging and not running away from them, frightened and averted. For light is perceived only if viewed directly; every aspiration to accept it from the corner or from the side, or with the eyes closed, refracts that divine light. But not in colors, as is the case with a rainbow, but in night and darkness of our ignorance and unwillingness to embrace what we fear. And we are afraid of what is in front of us all the time – there, now, always present above us and inside us – such is the quality of the Angel, every presence in a lucid dream is, in fact, only a mechanism for alleviating that fear of looking into that light with eyes wide open. Both shadow and fear in a lucid dream are always and only routes to the Angel who tells us where to go – if we dare and if we find courage and Will. Because if we are not ready to embrace such a foreign and horrible shadow, how will we dare perform the Great Work? If we fail in our own dream, how much can we expect from ourselves in the wakefulness? Indeed, a dream is an ideal playground for the soul. Whether you weave light or shadow on this divine loom is ultimately the same thing – as long as the game is played with the same enthusiasm, the ultimate attainment will always be the same, no matter how impossible it may seem to us.
ADDITIONAL NOTES
Something needs to be said about certain details that may be important to a practitioner and that he may come across in a lucid experience. Speech within a dream should certainly be mentioned. A practitioner must not be taken aback by the impossibility of pronouncing words as he does on the physical plane. He will often find it challenging to speak in a dream. What further complicates this action is that we limit ourselves to the physical movement of the mouth, tongue, and lungs – which we do not actually have in a dream. However, if we now concentrate on the sound that needs to be heard more actively than on moving our lips, then our mouth and throat, that is, the projections of those organs, will echo what we want them to. Something similar is with flying; as long as we actively keep trying, we will have trouble, but when we focus on the final distance, the flight will start automatically. Speech without letting your voice out is also an extremely valuable trick, performed by pronouncing letters and words just within the mind and moving your tongue without opening your mouth. This is a very convenient way of performing rituals on the physical plane as well, in a way that we will almost hear within our minds what we do not say physically at all. Speech distortion in a dream is a similar phenomenon as the distortion of our image – namely, every time we look in the mirror within a lucid dream, we will always see a distorted figure. Such a distorted voice and figure can often intimidate and trigger the arrival of shadow and fear that accompanies it. These are all precious experiences to be gained, and they can be essential points of our action plan. We really believe that all experiences are not divided into good or bad, in the waking state and a dream – but to those lived through or not.
Special attention should be dedicated to the phenomenon of elevators within a dream and their use. As we have seen in teleportation experiences, our field of vision often destroys our projection by provoking overwhelming anticipation in us – so the action of passing through a certain door actually pre-projected the room or hallway we expect before we have opened that door to see what is behind. It is challenging to step out of a dream in this way; that is why we use a step backward because the sphere of gaze behind our backs does not fall under the influence of the censors of reality – simply because we do not see it and have no control over its “logic” and “reality.” With elevators, the situation is completely hopeless: we enter the enclosure, after which we close the door and start moving – up or down. And as we are using that elevator, the expectation in us is shattered by the fact that we cannot see the scenario outside the elevator. All the while, our mind keeps building a reality that suits it. Suppose we include an elevator descending a couple of floors down. In that case, such descent deepens the trance with our sense of decay further, and as we are finally entering the ground floor and the elevator door is finally opening, instead of entering the expected space, we are now stepping into the entrance of hell and our own fears – those projected by our mind, as we are entering the true domain of the shadow. It will be extremely difficult to leave such a dream, partly because the mind has had too much time to construct what it needs, partly because the feeling of going down and deepening the dream has led us to descend into deeper primordial levels of our being reigned by fears and restrictions – those formed in early childhood. At the same time, the effect and the feeling of going downhill has the effect of compressing and slowing the time, which further complicates the possibility of getting out of such an awkward environment.
There is one more thing to avoid – and that is to use a phone in your dream. In fact, do you remember the last time you talked on the phone in your dream? A very inconvenient question, even those who are sure they used to talk on the phone in their dreams actually only have the feeling that they were talking, and now if they focus on that event they dreamed of, they will see that those are mostly false memories and that their experiences of talking on the phone in their dream are much rarer than they initially thought. And the ones that did happen are very vague, with eerie and incomprehensible voices. In a very similar way, it is almost impossible to read meaningful letters in a dream – they always disintegrate, twist, or melt, and even if they have a shape that can be discerned, it means nothing meaningful too often. This is mostly a simple neurological reason because the observation of visual or auditory stimuli and connecting these stimuli into meaning implies different parts of the brain spheres, which have difficulty communicating while dreaming. The situation with a phone is as serious as with an elevator; as much as telephones are usually indoors, the ringing of a telephone is usually a call from the primordial realms of our personality and often represents a call from the deepest hell. That ringing of the phone diverts our attention from the action plan or intention that rides through the dream alive and undisturbed. One ring and our perception is now completely directed to another corner of the dream, with us expressing anticipation by wondering who is calling us in this far place? And already that question flowing through our minds at the moment the phone starts ringing automatically brings the projection, and by picking up the handset after we say “hello,” – silence usually follows. We focus even harder to hear better who is on the other side of the line – while our mind cleverly and cunningly builds another reality, escaping from the action plan and our intentions. All this precious time, it keeps gathering an army from which there is no defense, and after a few seconds of waiting, a terrifying voice of a character who drove fear into our bones when we were children will echo on the other side of the line. Even when we hang up, it will be too late, and we can only passively watch the projection of a dream that will now rush toward us like a bloodthirsty beast chasing its prey. The first adjoining door of the room in which we find ourselves will begin to creak open, and we will see that terrible apparition which we ourselves have invoked by a completely primitive mechanism, falling for childish deception.
The use of all means is allowed, especially the two you have in your pockets. Didn’t you notice them? The next time you find yourself in a lucid dream, do the following: look for one blue pill in the right pocket of your pants and a red one in the left. This will be quite enough for their projection – right now, you have placed the pills by your mind where they are needed – in the pockets of your astral pants. Accordingly, we can determine what each pill will bring as an ability or effect on a dream: when you swallow the blue one within a dream, you will get a crystal clear vision or prolong the stay in the dream. Swallowing the red one, you can get the perfect ability to fly, teleport, the power to change shape, or it will banish any presence of a shadow and fear. The most important thing is to underline the meaning of intuitive solutions and circumvent laws that limit not a dream but a dormant soul.
THE BODY OF LIGHT
We have left perhaps the most important technique for the end of this presentation, which is best performed only after we have become familiar with all the previous forms of lucid dreaming and after we have mastered all the abilities and mechanisms of a dream. The performance itself is known in the occult milieu as the “Body of Light.” Although it has been known for centuries in various forms and cultures, we will mention the one performed in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. In short, the whole technique comes down to imagining a mirror image, or a duplicate of yourself in front of you. After building that image for a while, there comes the part in which we transfer our consciousness and sensation to the duplicate – into the “Body of Light.”
Success in the complete transfer of consciousness to the astral body is something that is very rare in occult work, and it can be said that this technique is both simple and impossible to perform, especially if by the success we mean complete transmission of consciousness in the same way as we did in previous techniques. There are several elements here that simply prevent such transmission, and as long as these elements are present, this exercise will be nothing more than a mere visualization exercise, which in the end is not such an inconvenient thing. In fact, there are two important elements that many Aspirants do not pay attention to, and those seem to be the most important causes of failure.
The first element is the timing of the technique because, in too many cases, the technique is performed during the day or, in the worst case, at bedtime, when our brains are simply destined to fail in lucid dreaming experiences. We need the early morning, when the brain is intoxicated with hormones that build the reality of dreaming and when consciousness is so far away from that in the waking state. The ideal time would be after 6 hours of sleep or an hour before we normally wake up. This depends on whether the individual has a waking-up routine or has a different schedule each day – when it is more appropriate to apply the first option of 6 hours of sleep.
The second element is a trick to perform, which is as simple as it is effective. We may notice that our art is full of technically irrelevant things that hardly affect or push us in the direction of success at all; really, little is written about these little tricks that make such a big difference between the peak of success and complete failure. It is about the following moment: after 10 minutes of constructing the duplicate standing in front of us at a distance of two meters, now comes the most difficult part: and that is to transfer consciousness to the double and see with his eyes. In order to see with astral eyes, you have to look with a changed consciousness. You have to acquire a conditioned reflex at the moment of entering a new body and looking at things from a new perspective. At first, it is a trick, but it is learned very quickly unless you waste precious time looking for perfection in your visualization. The trick is in the determination to reach out, not to persevere. It should be done, not doing. It is a complete misconception that the chance of transmitting consciousness increases as time goes by; on the contrary. The transfer can happen in just a few minutes. What enables success is the activation of specific levers of the mechanism, after which the whole thing moves completely automatically and without any force. The effort in visualization is entirely unnecessary, almost undesirable. When you look at your body from the astral double, at that moment, you must acquire all the aspects that this new body has. Therefore, at the moment of transmission, you not only have to see with new eyes but also breathe the air from “there,” smell and stand in “that” place. You have to burden the mind with the truth that you are really there. You have to turn off your own reality censor that tells you that it is all just a fantasy, with the simple truth that you really are “there.” That truth must not have any aspect of falsehood. Create success by creating magical links. You cannot expect to be there if you breathe and think from here. And even if you fail, try to experience failure from there. You will see, my dear, that you will soon achieve success in this if you do the right thing by doing it properly.
The first, some might say catastrophic mistake, is that practitioners take this step with their eyes closed, thinking that open eyes are an aggravating circumstance in switching consciousness and that visual sensation will disable and overload our attention. On the contrary, it is open eyes that will burden a part of the mind – but not the one in charge of transmitting consciousness, but the one that prevents the experience of transmission. With open eyes, we will disable that very part of the mind that blocks the experience of seeing from a new perspective. At this point, we use a trick that turns the mission impossible into a child’s play. All it takes is to imagine looking into the eyes of your original body from the place of the double eyes but to imagine the image intensifying as you inhale and exhale. In fact, you have to create the impression that you are breathing from the place where your double is located. When you take in air, you have to pull it in from there and to feel like inhaling cigar smoke to increase and ignite the ember. In this case, you will ignite the level of consciousness that, due to too much data and sensation, will have to decide on a new position – the position of the eyes of your astral counterpart. With exhalation follows the same thing; in fact, inhaling and exhaling air from a new body will prevent awareness from returning to the perspective of your physical body, and very quickly, you will almost lose physical sight. The use of inhaling and exhaling will burden the attention so much that the transfer of consciousness will happen many times faster and easier with this little trick. As if your attention considerably increases while you focus on a new perspective during active inhale and exhaling, which indeed looks like your new sight behaves now like a cigar burn from such aggressive breathing, like fanning the flame – that is indeed the whole trick of the entire operation. It is very important to pay attention to the idea of looking into our own eyes and not the whole body in general. Eye fixation is very important, almost crucial for success, which together with inhaling and exhaling – imagining that consciousness now ignites like that cigar ember in the new body – forms a unique mechanism that triggers the process of consciousness transfer, and which is, without the presence of these details, simply doomed to failure in a huge number of cases – regardless of the years spent training.
The emphasis on performing in the early morning hours is important primarily because an Aspirant really needs to experience full success as soon as possible and to get the highest possible motivation for future endeavors. Once the full transfer is achieved, we can use this technique during any part of the day and in any circumstances. You can apply it on the bus or subway or while watching a movie. The early morning hours represent the greatest possible ally to our mind to accomplish something so unattainable and impossible for him, although the reality and ease of this technique is quite the opposite. This brilliantly simple and important exercise will bring the mind to unimaginable heights; mental projection will be mastered over time to such an extent that it will completely overcome the time-limited lucidity and conditioning of a lucid experience by the duration of the REM phase, as well as the constant need to deepen and strengthen the vision and other flaws that lucid experiences have.
Frater 273
Frater 273 | Reflections on Thelema 
This blog was… how do I say it? Relevant!! Finally I’ve found something that helped me.
Cheers!
LikeLike
congratulations on your page, great content! quick question, I have a book on astral projection and the author recommends a ritual to strenghten your lucid dreaming capacity, you sit in front of a mirror and stare at your reflection without blinking, place a candle between you and the mirror, what is your opinion and this excercise?
LikeLike
It is nice method for relaxation.
LikeLike