{fb1000000There's a new Virtual Reality craze going around at the moment. Unlike some VR systems, this method gives you extremely high resolution images and sound, and may include touch, smell, or even taste in some cases. The images are under your own control, and not pre- programmed. It's not a new system (it was first scien- tifically recorded in 1867) but it's only recently that people have caught on to the possibilities in a big way. It's called Lucid Dreaming.
Most people, from time to time, remember having a dream that seems extremely real. The theory behind Lucid Dreaming, is that all dreams are actually created in this highly realistic mode, but that our sleeping mind doesn't absorb the detail. The human mind is also deliberately programmed to forget dreams, so as to reduce confusion between things that really happened, and things that were dreamt.
A lucid dream is one where the dreamer "wakes up" inside the dream, becomes aware that he is dreaming, and can then start to take control of all aspects of the dream envi- ronment.
{fb1ff55ffGetting Started
{fb1000000The key to achieving lucidity while dreaming is to try to find out if you are dreaming. This is actually quite difficult to remember to do while you are asleep, so the trick is to get into the habit of checking regularly, during the day, to ensure that you are not dreaming.
The classic reality check, devised by Stephen LaBerge of the Stanford Sleep Research Centre in California, is to look around for a printed word which is at least four letters long. Then look away and look back. For most people, the word will have changed if they are dreaming. In my case, probably because I do a lot of reading in my dreams, sometimes a six letter word will manage to be unchanged when I look back at it, but there is a rather odd effect as the letters seem to struggle to get back in the right order which is enough of a clue to tell me that I'm dreaming.
Before I learnt about Lucid Dreaming, I used to read newspapers fairly regularly in dreams. The dream newspaper stories used to make dream sense, but I used to get very frustrated with the cartoons, something was making them very difficult to read. As I tried harder to read them, I suddenly figured out that I was dreaming, and that my unconscious mind wasn't any good at making up jokes. Not knowing about Lucid Dream- ing, I would then turn the page, carry on reading, and go back to sleep.
Now, as soon as I recognise that I'm in a dream, I start to take control. In a lucid dream you can do almost anything, but you need to act gradually to avoid waking yourself up. Some lucid dreamers find control easier than others. Some dreamers report that mundane activities like switching a light on and off seem impossible or result in unexpected changes. Nobody knows why.
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{fb1ff55ffFlying
{fb1000000One very popular pastime enjoyed by many lucid dreamers is flying. It's not easy, and should not be attempted until you are sure that you have a considerable degree of control over the dream environment. Different people have different tech- niques for getting airborne.
One dreamer finds that he needs to conjure up some handles, like those used by water-skiers, to pull him into the air. I just take a bit of a run up and do a long jump, and just at the point where my feet are about to touch down, I decide to keep going for a few more yards, then a few more yards after that. This gets me flying just above the ground, but it isn't easy to get higher. I have to arrange for the presence of a cliff, or the top of a tall building if I'm in an urban dreamscape, and fly off the edge.
{fb1ff55ffThe Dream Machine
{fb1000000Stephen LaBerge has deve- loped a machine which flashes lights and sounds beeps when it detects REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. He finds that these signals are often incorporated into the sleeper's dreams, as doorbells ringing or traffic lights changing, and the subject can learn to recognise these events as indications that they are in a dream.
His simplest machine, the NovaDreamer, is available commercially in the USA for $275, and more advanced models are sold for $900.
