Lucid Dreaming

Wormwood

Member
How many of you have experienced lucid dreaming? It is the contention of a great number of knowledgeable people that when you dream, you are "out of body", particularly when your dream is lucid. I had experienced a great number of lucid dreams as a child. I still have them but they are far less frequent, at least as far as I can remember. The majority of the time, when I become aware in my dreams that I am dreaming, I wake myself up. But there have been a couple of times that I had fun with it. I for sure remember flying and it remember being one of the most fun things I have ever experienced. I was able to control my dream, and was fully aware that I was dreaming. Was I experiencing an OBE? (I dont know for sure but Im leaning towards yes). How many of you have had a similar experience? I know one person personally who had a very interesting experience were he was interacting with his father in a dream which was lucid. He said in the dream that he knew his father was lucid as well. In the morning he asked his father about it and he said his father was stunned beyond belief.
 
I've had a few lucid dreams, and there was even a time when I was able to have a few of them on command by setting an intent to experiment in them. I might have written about those experiments in retrospect somewhere on Skeptiko; at the time they happened I documented them on another forum. I haven't had any lucid dreams recently, although, oddly, I recall a dream from a few nights ago where I said something like "this is happening because we're dreaming" without becoming lucid, which is kind of paradoxical.

Interesting about your friend and his father - I once had a lucid dream in which my father and I were having a conversation whilst driving in a car, and I told him I'd ask him about the dream when I woke up. I did, and he had no recollection of it. Disappointed...

Have never been able (but don't think I've tried either) to exert anything other than normal control in lucid dreams, but have been able to fly (and saw myself in an outside shop mirror whilst flying). I fly sometimes in non-lucid dreams too though, so that's nothing unique to my lucid dreaming. My lucid dreams tend to have limited duration. I've tried to prolong them by sitting and meditating within the dream, but that hasn't worked.

By the way, there are quite a few Skeptiko threads already on lucid dreaming.
 
I've been practicing AP and lucid dreams for a few years. My best experiences are when I just lay down for 4 or so hours on Galantamine, but also some of my worst. My recall is often shoddy but I've seen my body from outside a couple times, walked through walls, flown through the sky, visited ethereal realms and talked with strange people and creatures. Or at least I'd like to think I have.
 
I've been practicing AP and lucid dreams for a few years. My best experiences are when I just lay down for 4 or so hours on Galantamine, but also some of my worst. My recall is often shoddy but I've seen my body from outside a couple times, walked through walls, flown through the sky, visited ethereal realms and talked with strange people and creatures. Or at least I'd like to think I have.

Cool stuff, man. Anything you can confirm as veridical especially whilst astral projecting? And how do you distinguish astral projecting from lucid dreaming, especially w.r.t. Wormwood's initial question as to whether lucid dreams involve being out of body?
 
Anything you can confirm as veridical especially whilst astral projecting?
Sadly, nothing really. One time I went out and saw there were two girls in my neighbors place which is unusual and then later confirmed while awake an hour later, but in the sleep paralysis state the senses are massively heightened. You can hear things crystal clear from a pretty good distance so its possible I constructed that there were two women there. Another time I had an OBE in a camper and saw someone walking in to use the restroom which is a common occurrence but I didn't force myself to wake up to check and this is also too common to be worthy of any kind of test.

Wormwood's initial question as to whether lucid dreams involve being out of body?
I personally think it does, I like the shamanic approach that takes the dreamworld to be closer to if not synonymous with the astral world of the afterlife/emotions/thought w/e you want to call it.
Sometimes it is very obvious that I am experiencing being outside of my body, such as when I see my body from above as I have twice before but other times (and I suspect this has more to do with low blood sugar than anything else) it is very very difficult to tell if I am even asleep and not just under some terrible affliction where I cannot breath, can barely move and feel severe pain as I crawl around on my stomach in the dark. I mostly use sleep induction techniques, other techniques like sensory deprivation probably would lead to more pure experiences that are less dreamlike. Particularly because of my method the two experiences of AP and lucid dreaming often blend together but I do think there is a sliding scale between them, my biggest difference is the vividness of my senses. When entering the OBE state I sometimes hear music, the radio, talking... during seperation there is an extremely jarring 'vibration' or shaking stage that is so difficult to overcome that I typically fail here about 50% of the time after concentrating very seriously for hours, but when successful I will suddenly have vision of the room around me and my sensations become completely different as if I am immersed in an ocean of different emotions and electric currents that go up and down my body. It took me a year or so just to not botch it after separating out of excitement. After getting out movement becomes less physical for me, if I try to move my arms and legs up and down I cannot move at all. Instead I've found I can rapidly move anywhere I want simply through the imagination. Typically with my Lucid dreams there are none of these problems, pretty much anyone can dream but I find it very difficult to get used to the OBE state.

I would like to try veridical testing but the phenomenon even when I'm trying to induce it is very rare and when it does happen my recall can be extremely foggy to very clear but there are clear dreamlike obscurances.
 
Back
Top