CAN
YOU IMAGINE being able to track down the DEVILS who make life difficult
for 99% of humanity, that small group of greedy rogues who enslave mankind?
Who make miserable laws, tilt the playing board so a third of us starve,
a third dogpaddle so as not to starve and the last third collude with the
henchmen, serve them and get by barely. Can you imagine tracking the identity,
function, habit, creative deceit of the 1% of evil men with our psychic
powers, then appointing a group of activists to research, track them even
better, get journalists to write them up, expose them so that their evil
workings are detoured at every turn? That would take a bevy of smart people
learning to use their psychic powers. Hindu Yogis claim to have simple
techniques that liberate a person's psychic powers. Something about
the waking a little before dawn, taking a shower, then putting the needling
water on cold for a minute to shock the skin, then dong some simple pranic
yogic breathing with limbs stretched to pull out the nerves a bit, then
wrapping in a blanket to do a relaxed meditation. At that point, they all
report that they go into a strangely empowered dreamworld, a bliss condidition
of mind acuity. . They're sitting up but they mind unfetters. The well
triggered alert, meditating mind escapes the confines of the chattering
brain tied to earthly concerns and leaps thru the third eye to see beyond
the limits of hearing and sight. They are in the physical world but flying
like zephyrs.. Going where soul guides. In this dream, they see the reality
which they couldn't know in their limited waking consciousness. They are
conscious so they're remembering. They're able to steer, locate, investigate.
They can do awake dreaming. And in this state, they can ask questions both
of people (Nixon, Clinton, alive or dead.) They can hear the answers
and see the people that give them.
Imagine this experienced world traveler, this psychic journalist, who can perhaps attend Bilderberger meetings, sit invisibly at Camp David with the president and the deal makers. Imagine a political psychic who knows what's going on. He does this a few days a week. In his 'downtime' at work, at home, when the NEWS comes on, the psychic flashes of intuition rain down on him. "That's a lie.That is propaganda, an obvious hoax. They are manipulating our minds, perverting our opinions.." The psychic detective can now interpret world events and trends as that glad, fatuous fascist Thomas Friedman can not apparently. He said on TV last night sitting with Hillary and the gal pres of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, "I feel the terror of these Al Qaeda types multiplying in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Meaning we have to kill them all. Not stop doing the gross things that turn rural people who lost half their families to our soldiers into America haters.
To see through the sham with psychic voyaging. What a fine hobby that
would be? Half mystic, half political activist, sounds fun. How do we start?
Online, do the notes and sketches of positions, (mudras) for Yoga. Try
it one morning. Or set the alarm the night before and schedule some
CONTROLLED
DREAMING. Many websites with free tutorials. Must be good
stuff taught by true gurus as they don't charge $$$. Google search.
Some of the teachers call it LUCID
DREAMING
Read Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D.on this pursuit. He is if not the originator's then an early adherent.: http://www.lucidity.com/NL32.OBEandLD.html
SKEPTIC. Steven Novella's NEUROLOGICA BLOG says it can't be done. See where I captured this text.
"The primary problem with the astral interpretation of Out-of-Body
Experiences (OBEs) is twofold. Too many accounts are not easily seen
through an astral lens, i.e. there was no perceptible astral body or
silver cord. More damning is the interaction problem in which a
non-material world is said to communicate or otherwise interact with
our
material world. There is, however, another immaterial and fantastic
world that we all interact with on a nightly basis, the world of dreams.
It might seem absurd to propose that people are mistaking a dream for
a
realistic appearing OBE phenomenon but there is a very unusual and
relatively unknown type of dream that was once considered as
supernatural as OBEs themselves; this is a lucid dream. Lucid dreams
are
not dreams that are logical, consistent, and make sense like our waking
lives (to the extent that they do). They are not like normal dreams
in
which the experient is lost in a fugue and uncharacteristically unfazed
by the bizarre happenings occurring around him or her. During lucid
dreams, the dreamer, by definition, realizes that the environment and
experiences around him are constructs created entirely by his mind.
He
realizes that he is currently in bed asleep and all the people around
him are not separate individuals but creations of his sleeping brain.
The lucid dreamer has, in effect, woken up while still asleep. This
might sound like a bizarre and suspect phenomenon but it is recognized
as real by the mainstream psychological and dream research communities.
I have, in fact, experienced many lucid dreams myself and I can attest
to their intriguing characteristics. My comments and conclusions are
not, however, derived from my experiences but from controlled
experiments that have been conducted for years in many labs around
of
the world.
Historical Lucidity
The term "Lucid Dreaming" was coined in 1913 by Dutch psychiatrist
Frederik van Eeden. The concept itself, I suspect, goes back millennia;
probably as long as we’ve had a word for "dream”. The first recorded
account however, is from the 4th century B.C.. In his "On Dreams”
Aristotle wrote: "When one is asleep, there is something in
consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but
a
dream."1 In 415 AD St. Augustine provided the Western world with its
first written account of a lucid dream. This was in the form of a letter
describing the dream of Gennadius, a physician from Carthage. These
sparse and unenlightening writings over the centuries are in stark
contrast to the accounts written by Tibetan Monks between seven and
eight hundred AD. They perfected a form of yoga that allowed them to
maintain full consciousness as they entered a dream state. This allowed
them to experience lucid dreams of the highest order, controlling their
dreams with exquisite finesse. More importantly, this ability engendered
an understanding of the true nature of the dream world that was
centuries beyond other cultures. They were the first to realize that
dreams were purely a product of the mind. Centuries later, St. Thomas
Aquinas made a passing reference to Aristotle’s acknowledgement of
a
special type of dream in which the senses were relatively undiminished.
Ideas such as this, however, in medieval Europe were frowned upon.
This
was due to the persistent and pernicious belief that dreams were caused
by external agencies such as demons or other supernatural entities.
This
was about to change however. During the nineteenth century it finally
dawned on the western world that dreams were products of the mind and
not the bowels of the underworld. This was the first crucial step
required if dreams were to be approached in a scientific manner by
psychologists and physiologists. One of the early pioneers of esoteric
dream research was professor of Chinese literature and language Marquis
d'Hervey de Saint-Denys. A meticulous and dedicated researcher, he
documented twenty years of his dreams in his 1867 book "Dreams and
How
to Guide Them”. In this book he describes how he sequentially learned
to
improve his dream recall, then how to "awaken" in his dreams, and
finally how to exert limited control over them. This was a key
demonstration that would influence researchers in the future that it
was
possible to learn how to have a lucid dream. More notable believers
during this period include Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.
Unfortunately both only made passing references to lucid dreaming for
although dream research was finally on a more scientific footing, there
was still much skepticism towards the concept of lucid dreams. In "The
Understanding of Dreams" Nietzsche is quoted as saying, "…And perhaps
many a one will, like myself, recollect having sometimes called out
cheeringly and not without success amid the dangers and terrors of
dream
life: 'It is a dream! I will dream on" 2. Freud was slightly more direct
in the second edition of "The Interpretation of Dreams" when he stated:
"... there are some people who are quite clearly aware during the night
that they are asleep and dreaming and who thus seem to possess the
faculty of consciously directing their dreams. If, for instance, a
dreamer of this kind is dissatisfied with the turn taken by a dream,
he
can break it off without waking up and start it again in another
direction—just as a popular dramatist may under pressure give his play
a
happier ending.”3 The first serious research into lucid dreaming had
to
wait until 1913 when Frederik van Eeden coined the term and presented
a
paper to the Society for Psychical Research. In it he described 352
of
his lucid dreams which he collected from 1898 to 1912. "In these lucid
dreams," he states, "the re-integration of the psychic functions is
so
complete that the sleeper reaches a state of perfect awareness and
is
able to direct his attention, and to attempt different acts of free
volition. Yet the sleep, as I am able confidently to state, is
undisturbed, deep, and refreshing.”4
The Skeptics
Over the ensuing decades, other researchers began seriously studying
lucid dreams but the attitude of the scientific community was skeptical
to say the least. They seemed to have a knee-jerk philosophical
objection to the very concept of lucid dreaming. To most it was seen
as
nothing more than daydreaming. Part of this reticence was due to the
fact that the parapsychological community was interested in this
phenomenon. Studying lucid dreaming was seen as tainted due to its
association with ghosts, esp, and flying saucers. Examples of this
skepticism were related by psychologists Alfred Maury and Havelock
Ellis
in the 1900s. Maury was fond of saying that, "these dreams could not
be
dreams" . The more widely known Ellis stated that " I do not believe
that
such a thing is really possible, though is has been borne witness to
by
many philosophers and others from Aristotle…onwards." Even in the late
seventies skepticism was the order of the day for mainstream dream
researchers. To explain what it was that lucid dreamers were
experiencing, many researchers’ fall back position was a French paper
published in 1973. It was noticed by the paper’s authors that many
people with sleep disorders would experience brief awakenings during
REM
sleep. It was during these brief moments between sleep and full
wakefulness that these experiences must have been happening. These
"micro-awakenings" , as they were termed, were thus offered as a possible
physiological explanation for lucid dreams. On the surface, this
skepticism might seem unwarranted but it’s important to consider that,
at this time, all evidence for lucid dreaming was anecdotal. Science
does not and should not advance solely on the basis of someone’s word.
The potential for distortion and error are just too high. Even in 1975,
when lucid researcher and author Patricia Garfield showed unrivaled
success with increasing lucid dream frequency and selecting dream
topics, the reaction was mixed. Her presentation to the influential
APSS
(The Association for the Psychophysiological Study of Sleep) generated
excitement and interest but did little to assuage the skepticism of
most
of the members.
LaBerge and Lucidity
It was at this point that dream researcher Stephen LaBerge entered the
picture. Since he was five years old he has had lucid dreams and an
abiding interest in dreams in general. Stephen realized that
communication directly from the dream world was the missing ingredient
if he was to persuade the skeptical scientists. In this he was inspired
by researcher Charles Tart who first suggested it. This is as hard
as it
sounds especially since to be dreaming, one is, by definition,
paralyzed. Evolution instilled an important safeguard in our sleeping
brains. Every time we are in REM sleep and we are dreaming, a condition
called REM Atonia takes hold, paralyzing all our muscles except our
eyes
and the muscles responsible for circulation and respiration. If this
weren’t the case, we’d all act out our dreams, which could be a problem
if we were dreaming about flying, running or even just walking. I seem
to remember an article about a cat that had its REM Atonia turned off,
so to speak. This cat, while asleep, would stalk around and pounce
on
unseen animals; apparently he was dreaming about catching his next
meal.
Since eye muscles were the only voluntary muscles that were not
paralyzed, LaBerge realized that they had to be the key of communication
from the lucid dream state. It had been shown in previous studies that
there was a direct correspondence between the movement of eyes and
the
direction of ones dream gaze. The canonical example is from a dream
research volunteer whose sleeping eyes were consistently tracking back
and fourth horizontally for an extended period of time. When awakened
he
mentioned that he was dreaming of watching a Ping-Pong match. LaBerge
realized that a specific pattern of eye movements could be initiated
during a lucid dream and recorded by a polygraph. He tried the first
part at home and during his next lucid dream he successfully produced
a
specific pattern of eye movements. This was the first time a communiqué
was sent from the dream-world to the waking world. Unfortunately no
one
was there to intercept it. He had to prove this in a way the skeptics
could not ignore. In September of 1977 he applied to Stanford University
for his Ph.D. study of lucid dreams. In the fall of that year he was
in
his dream lab and ready to dream. The following describes his second
attempt in the dream lab on the lucky day of Friday the 13th, January
1978:
"After seven and a half hours in bed had my first lucid dream in the
lab. A moment before, I had been dreaming, but then I suddenly realized
that I must be asleep because I couldn't see, feel, or hear anything.
I
recalled with delight that I was sleeping in the laboratory. The image
of what seemed to be the instruction booklet for a vacuum cleaner or
some such appliance floated by. It struck me as mere flotsam on the
stream of consciousness, but as I focused on it and tried to read the
writing, the image gradually stabilized and I had the sensation of
opening my (dream) eyes. Then my hands appeared, with the rest of my
dream body, and I was looking at the booklet in bed. My dream room
was a
reasonably good copy of the room in which I was actually asleep. Since
I
now had a dream body I decided to do the eye movements that we had
agreed upon as a signal. I moved my finger in a vertical line in front
of me, following it with my eyes. But I had become very excited over
being able to do this at last, and the thought disrupted my dream so
that it faded a few seconds later."
Finally someone had produced objective evidence that a lucid dream has
taken place during REM sleep.
Evidence such as this was still not the panacea that LaBerge had hoped
for. He tried to submit his research to the journals of Science and
Nature but was rebuffed on multiple occasions. He was able to get
printed in the less prestigious journal "Perceptual and Motor Skills"
.
By the time that June 1981 had arrived however, Dr. LaBerge had compiled
more detailed and copious results from many lucid dreams and dreamers
in
his lab. During the annual APSS meeting that year he submitted four
papers on lucid dreaming and the point had finally been reached when
his
conclusions were undeniable. Even the most diehard skeptics could no
longer deny that lucid dreams were a bone fide phenomenon.
Google Search for articles where this author discusses why lucid
dreams are a better interpretation of Out of Body Experiences than
the
Astral hypothesis.
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