THE DREAM-CONSCIOUS STATE: A PERSONAL JOURNAL OF INNER EXPLORATION
Bruce G. MarcotSUMMARIES OF RECENT LUCID DREAM ATTEMPTS
In this section, I record selected lucid or vivid dreams or recount notable advances in my lucid dreaming experimentation. These notes constitute an ongoing, "living" document.
December 1996
Had a partially lucid dream pertaining to experiment number 5 listed above, that is, conjuring the image of, and communicating with, deceased friends or family.
I recall becoming conscious in my dream and remembering this particular goal. The person, however, that I conjured up -- not "consciously" -- was a person from the office, someone who died a few years ago and with whom I had worked on several projects. In life, the person was an insincere, self-serving, ladder-climbing egotist who made my work and life rather difficult. Their name is not important here (and my aim here is not to denigrate their memory).
In the dream, I recall seeing this person materialize in front of me and then begin berating me loudly for something I was doing. The verbal abuse was incessant, but I recall feeling only disgust, not dislike, hatred, or fear. The figure suddenly changed into a ghoul with an ashen-white skeletal face, and continued the assault. I recall thinking that I could react in fear and let the figure win, or simply renounce the figure and its attack, and turn and walk away. I turned and walked away. The dream image faded and I awoke. I felt glad I had turned and walked away, but even more I felt sad at remembering how this person had behaved during their life.
January 1997
Yesterday early morning, after a drought of a few weeks of not being able to induce a lucid dream, I finally had one. I dreamt I was being chased by some wild animals, when I suddenly realized it was a dream. I stopped running, closed my eyes in the dream (the dream-image faded to black, as it has in previous dreams in which I have consciously closed my eyes), and I tried to will the dream setting to change to something peaceful and non-threatening, particularly a Caribbean beach I had been on once. I opened my eyes in the dream and the setting had not changed, but the animals seemed more distant and less threatening. I tried again but then awoke.
February 1997
Had a quick lucid dream the other day ... a weekend, I had gotten up very early, and took a 2-hr nap in the late afternoon. During the nap I dreamt I was driving my nice new car on a steep downhill, and a ratty old car to my right was swerving to hit me. The driver was some scummy low-life and it seemed he was doing it on purpose. I tried to quickly swerve the other way, but suddenly my seat inside my car dropped down and became so low that I couldn't see outside, and I had only a sensation of careening out of control downhill with that car about to hit me. But the incongruity of driving that way instantly hit me, and suddenly, I forcefully thought "NO, this is a DREAM!" and immediately awoke with a start and a smile, as if I had forced myself to confront and conquer the perilous dream situation. I felt happy I could recognize the danger as my own dream and force myself out of it so quickly.
In other instances, while falling asleep at night, I continue to experience a falling-asleep conscious state, as discussed above. I know I'm falling asleep and am aware of my hearing shutting off. In one case, it felt like I had gone deaf and I then hear only a loud, intermittent thumping, perhaps my own pulse.
In another case (just last night) I heard a rushing sound as my hearing shut down (this is the usual sensation, and it can get quite loud), then it got quiet; I resurfaced to wakefulness and my hearing returned, all the while my being conscious of the experience. It's not at all disquieting, even if accompanied by body paralysis; it's the normal process of the body shutting out external stimuli to enter the sleep stage. Of course, though, being conscious during this process is probably not particularly normal.
March 1997
Had a very vivid and lucid dream pertinent to my experiment number 2 above, regarding pondering the Tibetan Book of the Dead while in a dream state. I recall thinking, "If I am in the Bardo, what would it be like?" And suddenly I was surrounded by dozens of evil demons such as described in the Book. I was not so much afraid as I was startled at their sudden appearance. But they kept their distance and in very short order I lost the lucid edge and either awoke or drifted to another dream.
I've also continued to have frequent experiences with falling asleep in the lucid state. Again, the most common experience is to hear a rushing sound before my ears "tune out."
But in another instance, in a lucid state, I recall a lot of seemingly random and harmless dreamy images as I fell asleep. As I fell asleep, I was thinking of my experiment number 1 above, meditating in a dream, and suddenly found my dream images and sounds to be supplanted by a pure emptiness. It was not like I simply closed my eyes in the dream (I have done that too), or was looking into a dark place ... it was rather like being suddenly confronted by nothing, a void, a vacuum, where I had no dream "substance" or body at all. I suddenly felt extended in all directions. This lasted for only a short while before I lost the lucid state.
April 1997
Just saw an interesting episode of Nova on PBS. It was about alien abduction reports, and how such reported experiences mimic many aspects of hypnogogic sleep paralysis and temporal lobe dysfunctions. I've seen this show before, and it's been presented in slightly revised form on other cable TV channels, and the message is interesting. And I might be able to shed a little light on this phenomenon from my own personal experience.
To the best of my recollection, I've never been abducted, by humans or anything else. But when I was in Junior High School, I believe it was, back in Wayne NJ, I recall having a startling and vivid (but not lucid) dream about witnessing a flying saucer and aliens. I was in a field, near a house on the side of a hill (hmm, much like our house was), and it was broad daylight, and I saw a silvery saucer hovering and slowly descending to the ground. I ran to house, frightened that "they" were coming to get me. I hid inside the house, staying low to the floor, for a short time, unsure what the saucer or its occupants were doing. I then gathered the courage to peek out of a low window, and suddenly there they were, two or three aliens just on the other side of the window, staring at me with big black eyes set in oversized heads and I suddenly felt great terror. I don't recall if I tried to flee but couldn't, or if I actually did flee. I think eventually they reboarded their ship and departed.
At least that was the vivid dream. At that period, I was writing short science fiction stories, so thereafter I wrote one based on this dream. I recall enjoying writing the story and rereading it. Yet it always was very clear to me that it was a vivid dream, nothing more. I seem to recall even waking up from the dream in bed, glad it was just a dream and greatly
amused at how interesting and vivid it was.But the stories I heard in this Nova broadcast, and a number of other UFO specials, recount tales from assumed or professed alien abductees that they often witnessed terrifying beings of this general form and appearance, and experienced spacecraft landings, abductions, terrible medical experiments, and then were placed back at their initial location with few if any memories of the experience.
But mine was a dream! A rather fun one at that, once I was over the initial apprehension. I can see, too, that if I were to seriously ponder this very old memory, maybe under the extreme suggestibility of hypnosis, it may come back to me in detail as a "suppressed" event as if it really happened. But it didn't.So here I sit, with my dream matching the professed experiences of assumedly credible UFO "abductees" and witnesses. Which is the more plausible and parsimonious explanation, that there are common mental images which, for some reason, invade our (hypnogogic) sleep, or that aliens have intense interest to spy on, abduct, abuse, and then return us to our location of origin and even to our very initial posture...? I think I'll sleep on it.
...
Had another interesting lucid dream last night (actually, early this morning). The initial, non-lucid dream was of me at some family get-together, with aunts, uncles (I think I was the uncle), kids, and older folks. My sister Vivian was there. The kids starting getting loud, then soon it was a din with kids and others yelling. For some reason, I suddenly, spontaneously flashed on the notion that "hey, this is a dream!" I realized I could fully control the setting, so in the dream I closed eyes, put my head down into my hands, and thought to block out the images and sounds. They started to fade, but then I stopped doing this because I knew I could do it fully but wanted to experiment with the setting more.The din subsided, and to my laughing surprise Vivian suddenly said "Hey, you can't do that, this is my dream, not yours!" I laughed and "argued" back, fully conscious that I was dreaming and it was my own imagery. I replied, "not it's not, it's MY dream!" She argued, "No, it's MY dream!" and so it went for a time. After her urgent insistence, I began to wonder, while still in the lucid-dream state, "hmm, what if this really IS her dream? What does that make me, a figure only in someone else's imagination?" I soon lapsed into a regular, non-lucid dream, and late awoke. Later, I recounted this dream to her over the phone, but she had no recall of having had a similar dream herself. (Sure, that's because she was in my dream!)
June 1997
The past 2 months have seen rather few lucid dreams. The ones I have had have been unmistakable, but very brief. Usually, they're triggered by realization that something in the dream is against the laws of physics or seems surreal.
For example, a few nights ago I dreamt I was standing downstairs at the front window, about to peek out. I grasped the shade and pulled it aside. The details in this dream were striking, but I often have very vivid dreams with fine detail and vivid colors. I felt the tactile sensation of the blind, saw the weaving on it, and saw the colors of the blinds and the wooden molding around the paned window. I looked out onto our driveway and saw the large concrete wall to the left of the driveway, leading out to the street. I paused, and in a moment thought, wait a minute, something's not right here ... that wall ... we don't have a wall there! ... this is a dream! And I suddenly flashed into a lucid state. It lasted only a few moments and I then awoke, first feeling my body wake up, then my mind.
I have continued to have falling-asleep lucid events, though, when I first go to bed. I find I can often induce these better if I lay on my back; on my side, I usually just drift into regular sleep without remaining lucid. I wonder why the posture affects my lucid ability.
Early last month I did have a remarkable, lucid dream, in which was standing in a courtyard, and became lucid in the dream. I then remembered my experiment of wanting to test the physicality of objects in a dream, and willed my hand and arm to pass into and through a brick wall. It felt as if I had complete control over then entire dream image.
October 1997
Lucid dreams have become more intermittent lately, but the few recent ones I've had have been of great power, intensity, and vividness. It is frustrating not being able to induce the state nightly, though, and in some cases several weeks lapse between events. This is despite mentally focusing on the condition just before sleeping. I continue to find that I can rather readily induce the state when first falling asleep, when I fall asleep on my back rather than on my side, but it is far less comfortable a position for sleep. I still cannot account for this.
My attempts and experimentation will continue.
December 1997
A most remarkable lucid dream, while visiting my family in California over the holidays. In the dream I was walking along a path or road and suddenly became conscious that it was a dream. I instantly thought to experiment with my bodily sensations while asleep. I thought, I know I'm asleep and this is all a dream image produced by my mind, and my real body is asleep in bed, so let me try to sense my body while in this lucid dream state. For a moment I could sense my body in the bed, lying down asleep, but was simultaneously perceiving the dream-image. I then awoke, feeling like I was rising quickly from a dark hole and suddenly was back in my body in the bed.
A week or so later I had a lucid dream in which I attempted this again, but interestingly this time my "true" sleeping body was itself a dream perception. I realized this immediately upon waking when I saw that I was not lying the in same position or location as in the dream. Another recursive dream -- a dream within a dream, this time the second dream being a misperception of my body asleep in bed. Confusing?
I continue to have perhaps weekly lucid dreams now, some vivid and fun where I realize I can "do anything" and command myself to levitate or fly or command my environment and setting to change.