lucid dreams


sorabji.com: Dreamland: lucid dreams
THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016).
By Spiracle on Wednesday, March 4, 1998 - 02:10 am:
    has anyone tried this?
    being aware of the fact you
    are dreaming allows for
    greater control of your dreams..

    there are ways to train yourself
    so that you will be able to know
    that you are dreaming....

    i've usually had good experiences
    with this..but one time i realized
    i could do anything in my dream..
    fly, eat twenty coconut cream pies..
    whatever..and it was boring..
    cause i could have whatever i wanted..
    since then i haven't tried having
    these kind of dreams...cause sometimes it's not
    as fun being in control and having everything..

    but just wondering about anyone else's experience with this...

By Just Visitor on Wednesday, March 4, 1998 - 03:06 am:
    Yeah, I know what you mean, I dream lucidly occasionally, and yeah, you'd think that a conscious mind in a world only limited by imagination, some very incredible experiences could result. You could talk to God, the universe, aliens, you could fly faster than the speed of light, you could breath naturally underwater, anything you could imagine, and it would seem totally real and convincing.

    But not me. I've got this really irritating habit of dreaming a bit *too* lucidly (or maybe it's not lucid enough?). Either way, when I become aware I'm dreaming, I keep thinking "Wow, I should fly or eat twenty coconut cream pies", stuff like that...but nooooo, I ruin it everytime by thinking, nope, that couldn't happen, that's impossible.

    For example, the last lucid dream I had was simply me sitting in a lawn chair staring at a really nice metal pole for a loooonnnnngg time. No pies, no flying, no communing with the aliens. Me. A pole. Staring.

    What does that say about me? No, on second thought, don't answer that. I probably don't want to know.

    Mmm.. coconut cream pie.

By Sorabji on Wednesday, March 4, 1998 - 09:37 am:
    In college I spent a winter term experimenting with sleep deprivation. I was intrigued by a story a friend told me about how his mother, who was a nurse, once went over 90 hours without sleeping.

    At the end of that incredibly long shift her husband was driving her home. She panicked during this drive because she started dreaming while still awake.

    She was seeing horses and tractors and houses flying onto the road in front of them, and she kept yelling to her husband to watch out for the road hazards.

    I wanted to experience that sensation of dreaming while still awake, and I believed someone who told me that if you stay awake long enough eventually your mind just has to start dreaming.

    But somehow I never got that far. I stayed up for around 80 hours, and got as far as creating what seemed to me to be a perfectly coherent alphabet. I read it outloud to myself and spoke several of the words created with it, and made plans to create rules of grammar and curse words and slang.

    But this was not really what I had in mind. And that alphabet got lost with some other papers.


    When I was a kid my sister and I spoke an invented language that only we understood. The only words I can remember from that secret language are "No curia, bullsnitch." Which basically meant "No shit, dumbass."



By Spiracle on Wednesday, March 4, 1998 - 11:37 am:
    justvisitor..
    a pole? man..i have to go read that again..
    that cracks me up..thanks for starting my day
    off with such a laugh..but yeah..you'd think
    they'd be so great cause you can do anything..
    but i had one onetime were i just sat on a hill
    andi knew i was dreaming but i sat on a hill..
    and i thought , 'oh..so this is a dream eh?'
    but that doesn't compare to sitting in a lawn chair staring at a pole..that's wonderfull..

    oh well..maybe they are *too* lucid...

    sorabji...
    that sounds like fun..how'd you stay up that long?
    i get a headache just staying up for half that time and then i usually get sick from being so
    worn down...how'd you do it??? coffee wears off
    after a while i'd think...

By Jim aka PajamaBoy on Wednesday, March 4, 1998 - 12:14 pm:
    wow... pretty deep stuff.. *puts on knee high boots* I was just going to say how nice it is to dream about deceased friends and relatives still being amongst us. Oh well....

By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Wednesday, March 4, 1998 - 03:27 pm:
    I mananged to stay awake close to 72 hours and it was not pleasant, it was a decidedly bad trip. They say that when you are sleep-deprived, a large portion of your brain is actually sleeping and you're just running your brain on half its cylinders.

    I have lucid enough dreams as it is - ever dream of reading a book? An entire book? So that when you wake up, you realize that the book must still be in your head somewhere if you could only extract it. Same with music. I've actually had some luck with remembering melodies I've dreamed I was playing on the piano, and then quickly getting out of bed and playing it while I still remember how. They're never the amazing, deathless masterpieces that I think they are while dreaming, though. The dream novel would doubtless be a disappointment if I were to be able to view it. Then again, the plot for Stevenson's "Dr.Jekyll And Mr.Hyde" came to him in a dream.....

By Sorabji on Wednesday, March 4, 1998 - 03:50 pm:
    Spira - I decided not to bother with coffee or unnatural ways of forcing myself to stay awake. In fact, after the first 24 hour coffee seems to have the opposite effect on me and it just puts me right out.

    During that winter term I stayed up for more than 36 hours about 4 or 5 times. The first 24 hours are always the hardest, then you get your second wind.

    I really don't recommend it, either, under any circumstances. Especially "all-nighters," though I guess if it doesn't kill you and it's free then the side-effects beat those which come from other highs. I never understood high-school and college kids' fixation with proving they'd studied super-hard simply by going at it for 24 hours straight.


    Wilt Chamberlain used to say he got by on an hour or 2 of sleep a night during the months he built his own house. But I guess even an hour or 2 is different from none at all.

By N.b. on Wednesday, March 4, 1998 - 07:10 pm:
    I remember staying up 48 hours straight to finish a paper for a course i didn't care about, political science i think it was. the professor said it was due at midnight on thus-and-so day, and every day late thereafter took half a point off your grade. i finished typing the thing at 2 a.m., 2 hours after the deadline. In that state of being, i walked across campus to the Polit Sci building, which was of course locked, but i went all around trying windows until i found one i could pry open. I climbed in and crawled in the pitch dark up to his 4th floor office and slid the paper under the door. I got out of the building without being detected and walked back to the dorm in a state of delirious euphoria i've rarely experienced since, and which had nothing to do with grades...

By R.C. on Wednesday, March 4, 1998 - 08:54 pm:
    The best lucid dreams I've had were always during daylight hrs./when I'd normally be awake. Dreams that came when I was taking a nap/or fell asleep in a chair at the airport while waiting to change planes. Or when I slept during a flight. The times when you never make it into REM sleep. But for a year or so back when I was living in NY/I experimented with some dream techniques I read in abt in book on Native American spiritual practices -- using a dream-catcher (which helped not at all) & drinking a full glass of something non-alcoholic just before going to bed. When yr bladder gets full/you automatically wake up & have to whiz -- & this usually occurrs just before you enter into REM sleep. So you never reach the point where normal consciousness surrenders completely to the sub-conscious. I kept a diary of the dreams I remembered during that time/& they were weird as shit. Cdn't make heads or tails of them.

    I think dreams are just mental housekeeping. The mind's way of empyting it's cache files of a zillion ideas yr brain touched on during the course of the day. (And why the hell does my computer store the URL's of every site I've visited in that damn Temp. Internet Files folder anyway? I didn't ask for that feature!) I have only ever remembered abt 10% of the dreams I've had in my lifetime. Which probably means I'm borderline psychotic or something. But the one's I did remember upon waking were always significant in some way/vs. being just the mind's personal movies. The last dream I remembered was about 4 days ago -- something that's pushing me to turn it into a story. Which hasn't happened to me since 1992 -- dreaming a story. But those dreams are always very different/in terms of presentation. Very vivid & detailed/ almost hyper-realistic. I remember everything -- smells/colors/ voices/background music/lights & shadows/sensations -- which is why I can't help writing them down. But I doubt they really 'mean' aything. And I think I was drunk when I had that last dream a few days ago. For some reason/my hearing gets more acute when I'm inebriated/so I don't sleep as soundly. Or maybe it's just becuz I keep having to get up & pee.


By Dave on Wednesday, March 4, 1998 - 09:49 pm:
    I seldom remember my dreams and I never have nightmares. OK, I've had maybe 5 or 6. The dreams I like the best are the ones that go on for hours before I wake up. I become aware that it's getting lighter outside and go back to the dream. I glance up at the clock and go right back to dreaming again. I don't dream about anything especially exciting but I do seem to be aware that this is occuring and that is what makes the dream interesting to me. I haven't tried any dreaming techniques but I've heard about one that sounds easy enough. When you realize that you're having a dream, try to find your hands. If you can bring them up in front of your "face", you've taken control of the dream. I think I read about that in a Casteneda book.

By Asti on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 12:24 am:
    Speaking of dreaming of the deceased, do you ever wonder if the dream really is a dream?
    I have dreamt of my mother a few times and they were very peaceful and I definetly tried every trick to keep them "alive".
    Then there was one night a few years ago that I know it wasn't just a dream of her, though it was a dream-like state. I have gone over this night numerous times and you still can't convince me that it was "just a dream".
    Dreaming is Mental Housekeeping? Probably 99% of the time, it is (...and CAN someone answer why these URL's are saved on the comp??) but what do we call that 1%? Psychic or pyschotic?
    I have had some dreams where, WOW, if it came from mental housekeeping, I better get help! *LOL*

By Sleepy on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 12:51 am:
    i don't think this is what the rest of you have in mind.

    to me, lucid dreams is terrifying

    it is when you are half awake but still dreaming and you can't break out of it

    i remember one night, i was coming from a dream, i could see i was in my bed, but everything had a reversed look, like polarized photographs, if you know what i mean. the edges of things were white. i thought i was dying. i couldn't get up, i couldn't wake up.

    once i was in this suspended state, where i felt like i was lying in the bed in my parents' room back in our old house. at the same time i could hear, out the window, a voice calling "Wanda...come on Wanda" i knew i couldn't be in my parents' old room, but somehow i couldn't get back to my apartment for awhile... finally i woke some more, back in my bed and indeed someone was in the driveway, callling for his girlfriend next door who wouldn't let him in. Her name was actually Yolanda...

    being asleep and not being able to breathe, like you have a very bad flu, and you know you need to wake up and move around but you can't...

By R.C. on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 01:15 am:
    Yeah... I've had dreams like that too. Dreams where I felt something was attacking me/but I cdn't move. And worse ones -- where I dreamt terrifying things & woke up with blood under my nails/but no scratches on my body & no blood on the sheets. But those only happened when I was a kid/& usually when my parents were out of town. Except for one really awful dream the 3rd nite I spent after moving into my old apt. Makes you wonder if those old legends abt incubi & succubi cd be real... Too bad Mulder & Scully weren't around back then.

By Dave on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 01:39 am:
    Sometimes I fall asleep on top of both of my arms, and then my arms fall asleep and I wake up but my arms don't. They're numb and they don't work and I can't get out of bed. I'm stuck there until I can figure out a way to flail my leg over and roll over so I can sit up. Once, I swung my numb arm at the wall and I couldn't feel a thing until it started to wake up. By the time it was fully awake, I was crying like a baby it hurt so bad.

By Spiracle on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 01:54 am:

By Liquidtruth on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 01:09 pm:
    i've had some encounters with lucid dreaming but what i REALLY do a lot is make myself wake up. i realize that i don't like this particular dream or experience a dark emotion prefacing a bad dream so i wake myself up. i envision myself physically elevating my body up and up the levels away from sleep and then when i finally reach the height of my bed, then that's when i'm awake but know that i'm paralyzed.

    it's terrible, that limbo existence where you're waiting to be able to move again. makes youreally understand how quadripelagics(sp?) feel, except that i know that eventually i'll get out of it. there are some times that i panic, tho. anyone else experience this?

    also, the french view of dreams as "little deaths" is accurate, but it also goes for the stages before dreaming. i've been afraid that i was going insane. i can see my reality in my bed, in my room - but i hear vivid voices and see frightening and stark images around me. maybe that's when my brain is awash in a chemical composition similar to that of schizophrenics.

    dreams while asleep, hallucinations while awake and sober, drug-induced trips, existence with a mental illness -- it all goes back to the awe-full enigma of the 5 pound jellybags in our skulls.

By R.C. on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 01:53 pm:
    Thanks for that link, Spiracle. (How'd you do those characters anyway? I don't gots no little 'o' on me keyboard.) I can't believe it -- "lucidity induction devices"! These swine are actually trying to sell you shit to screw with yr dreams! Who wd be stupid enuf to buy such a thing?

By Markus on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 02:09 pm:
    The French euphemism "little death" refers to orgasm, not dreaming. Unless it's a wet dream, of course.

By Dave on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 04:07 pm:
    I always thought they were talking about Napolean or maybe Toulouse Lautrec. (sp?) Dream machines have been around for a while. I'd thought of getting a hold of one, at one time. I couldn't find anyone who had used one and who could tell me if they worked. I'm not afraid of stuff like that, hell I'm constantly bombarded by unnatural electromagnetic fields, why not try a tuned field designed to induce a particular state. Then again I've enjoyed hallucinogens and pretty much all manner of drugs (never heroin). When I was a kid, I took a mouthful of mercury and sprayed it all over like Gene Simmons. That reminds me of another thing we did as kids. First, you hyperventilate for a minute or so, then you tip your head back as someone else presses on the carotid arteries. Bam, you drop like a sack of flour, lights out. Some kids would have convultions while everyone laughed at them. You were cool if you didn't flop around. I didn't flop.

By Golden Boy on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 05:12 pm:
    Hmmmmm, asphyxiation...

    anyone dream in color...

    i found that i can control my dreams..kind of like having a remote control in my dreams..if it aint going my way then i just change the situation so that i can enjoy the dream, though there are times i can't control it and they usually turn into nightmares that can be pretty friggin scary...and that will be the night that i wake up often trying to escape it...

    weird..

By R.C. on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 06:07 pm:
    DAVE -- I can't believe you posted that! My brother & my homie from across the street used to do that shit when we were teens. They called it 'The Game'. I thought they were out of their minds. I was having none of it -- too scared they'd let me fall on a brick or something & bust my head open when I passed out. Once/we were all in our backyard & my brother did it to my neighbor while he was standing at the edge of the pool -- to see if hitting the water wd bring him to immediately/or if he'd start drowning. (He woke up as soon as he hit.) I thought those 2 were the only freaks on the planet who played 'The Game'. Ya learn somethin' every day at Sorabji.com.

By Christopher on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 07:48 pm:
    William S. Burroughs and Brian Gyson built a dream machine, and I believe you can obtain the blueprints for it online, somewhere. It basically was a cylindrical object with curved slits in it . Inside , you would put a light.that was placed on a turntable, and you would stare into it and enter an altered state. They made some really freaky recordings during some of these session in Paris. These were released on a record called "Breakthrough in Grey Room". I think you can probably pick it up on CD, now...

By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 09:17 pm:
    Genesis P-orridge and T.O.P.Y. both sell their own versions of the Gysin/WSB Dream machine....Trevor Blake/OVO used to also, don't know if he still does. They're simple enough to make your own anyway. I never had much results with one, but then my subconscious instinctual reaction seems to be to fight against all mind-altering stimuli....getting high only affects my motor skills, it doesn't really give me the mental buzz that it seems to give everyone else. Alcohol is a much preferable buzz to me.

    Food seems to be a more effective way to fuck with my own mental state, more so than recreational drugs or sleep deprivation.....I'm allergic to MSG anyway, so if I want to trip all I need do is scarf down a bag of Doritos....Fasting for a couple days is an amazing high.....so is giving up sugar cold turkey - John Lennon said kicking sugar was harder than when he kicked Heroin. I gave up all sugar in any form, including milk (contains lactose - milk sugar) for two weeks recently and it was just as WSB describes kicking Heroin - the third day was hell but after that you enter a clearing in the forest and everything seems crisp and clear and sharp and I felt like I was a kid again. I'm back on the junk food now, but I still feel better than I did prior to kicking originally. Hot spicy stuff like Tabasco, Cholula, and Mongolian Fire Oil is very mood-altering to me, and bring about some bizarre dreams if eaten shortly before bedtime. Bell peppers give me very deranged, sexual dreams.

By Sorabji on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 09:34 pm:
    a link to dream machine instructions is here.

    an intro is here

    so build you own.

    why do i find myself thinking of the Orgasmatron?

By Spiracle on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 10:39 pm:
    liquidtruth...
    i've done that as well..waking myself up..
    i'm pretty good at it now..if i have a bad
    dream..i'll prying my eyes open in the dream..
    it takes a while....eyes usually seem to be
    cemented so tightly shut though..

    r.c. 'welcome for the link..those were just little
    lower case o's...you could do 'em too i bet..there is a fixed font on this page ya know?
    o<o>o
    o<o>o

By Christopher on Friday, March 6, 1998 - 12:51 pm:
    Thanks Mark, for linking us to the Dream Machine. When I'm done building mine, I plan on installing it in my Orgone Accumulator.

By Dan on Saturday, March 7, 1998 - 03:50 pm:
    Orgasmotron ? Where do I get one?

By Richard on Monday, March 9, 1998 - 10:50 am:
    Regarding coffee putting you to sleep: Physiologically, coffee is actually a depressant, but one that behaves very oddly. Usually, your body reacts to coffee by overreacting against it. That is, instead of letting coffee put you to sleep, your body goes the other way and makes you more awake. However, under some circumstances, such as sleep deprivation or drinking a *LOT* of coffee, it makes you sleepy.

    Regarding dreams in which you seem almost awake, but can't move or wake up: I once read that the when you sleep your body releases some hormone which generally prevents you from moving. That's why you don't move too much while sleeping, especially when dreaming. When you wake up, another hormone is supposed to counter-act the original one. Sometimes it doesn't quite work, which leads to dreams in which you are almost conscious, but can't move. Or so this artice I read claimed. Wonder if it's true

By Ill skip the fluoroscopy thanks... on Monday, March 9, 1998 - 12:45 pm:
    Latest scientific info claims that electromagnetic energy venting up from the earth can cause all manner of weird phenomena, including sleep paralysis, paranoia, visual and aural hallucinations such as bright lights and voices in your head, and the sensation that "someone" is in the room. This info ostensibly claims to debunk the thousands of UFO "abductees" claiming that they were wisked from bed into a craft of some device and subjected to various intrusions on their person. Personally, I find this argument to be a load of crap, but I'm also inclined to say that 99 percent of abduction phenomena is as well. But what of the other 1 percent you ask? Well, I've taken to rigging a double barreled shotgun to my bedroom door, because if you think I'm just going to lay there while one of them filthy aliens tries to stick a glowing rod up my ass, you got another thing coming!

By Golden Boy on Monday, March 9, 1998 - 02:18 pm:
    I really do beleive aliens dislike us, or rather find us amusing.

    They probably treat us like some piss stop on the long highway that is our galaxy. Here they are flying around the universe meeting some cool life forms that we will never see in our lifetime, and here we are squabbling over race relations, presidency woes, world hysteria, environment, et. al. If you could fly through the universe exploring new life, and learning new reaches of the galaxy would you want to land on earth and explore???

    What the hell do I know about that???


By Dave on Monday, March 9, 1998 - 05:32 pm:
    This planet is a petting zoo. They swoop down and grab a few of us, scritch us behind our ears and occasionally, a maladjusted alien will stick things up our butts when noone's looking.

By Golden Boy on Tuesday, March 10, 1998 - 09:55 am:
    ouch

By Pretty Girl on Tuesday, March 31, 1998 - 09:17 pm:
    I had a dream in which all of my friends and I were in a virtual reality world created by a computer. Everyone was acting strangely and an ex-intimate companion of mine composed one of the corners of a room.

By Stupid Girl on Wednesday, April 1, 1998 - 12:12 am:
    I was working at a conveyer belt in a chocolate factory with my friend Viv, and it went faster and faster, and... Oh, wait. This is LUCID dreams. I thought it was LUCY dreams. Never mind.

By Hannah on Wednesday, April 1, 1998 - 07:11 pm:
    LOL @ stupid girl!

    Ricky: Lucy, I'm home!

    Lucy: AAhhh, Ricky!

    Heh heh, I laugh at myself for being an idiot.

By Stupid Engineer on Thursday, April 2, 1998 - 12:28 am:
    Yes, I often dream of telephone switching equipment, especially those sexy 5ESS modules... Oh, wait. This is LUCID dreams. I thought it was LUCENT dreams. Never mind.


By Slothropxx on Sunday, July 18, 1999 - 03:26 pm:

    there is no governor anywhere,we are all absolutly free


By Markus on Tuesday, February 8, 2000 - 03:52 pm:

    Late, but germane to the above discussion (By Liquidtruth on Thursday, March 5, 1998 - 01:09 pm):

    "For many years I have had a sleep disorder known as sleep paralysis, which is fairly common, I've been assured by doctors. In my case, it seems to be triggered by excess fatigue or excess chemical stimulation, such as when I drink coffee late in the day. I had the problem most severely when I was in college and drinking coffee as a way to stay awake and study. I usually have what is called sleep-onset sleep paralysis. As I am drifting off to sleep, I suddenly lose the ability to move. It literally happens in a snap - sudden, complete atonia of the muscles....When paralyzed, I can't open my eyes or lift a finger. Alarmingly, I'm still conscious. It's particularly troubling on a plane, a train, or a bus, because I can hear people talking around me but cannot move, and may have well been zapped by a paralytic raygun. Sometimes I have trouble breathing. To stop these attacks, i have to shake myself awake by moving my legs as best I can. The whole thing is quite disturbing....The doctors said my on-off switch for waking and dreaming isn't quite normal. My body thinks it needs to go into the dream state--and the muscles become atonic--before the brain is fully asleep. (One thing that I learned is that when a person dreams, his or her body is paralyzed, an ancient adaptation meant to prevent a person from acting out the particulars of a dream. Sleepwalkers have a defect in that system).

    "Making the situation all the odder is that during the paralysis it is common for a person to experience auditory or visual hallucinations. I've never seen anything--no alien sightings--but I've had auditory hallucinations of people entering my house or coming into the room. THere is also the sense that the paralysis is caused by these intruders. It is hard during the paralytic experience to keep the neurological cause in mind. Rather it seems that some Other, some Entity, is doing it. In past centuries these entities were assumed to be spirits, such as succubi or incubi. In our day and age they are assumed to be aliens."

    --Joel Achenbach, Captured by Aliens


By Abner on Monday, May 17, 2004 - 08:30 am:

    I dont do any thing to have lucd dreams i jus have them
    and i dont think that there are dream guide's or spirits guids I think people who have lucid dream are people who have been able to touch a relm that other people can't reach.
    a relm that is protected by people who have the abilyty to have lucid dreams but don't know it.
    and i belive that theres a higher relm of beengs
    that control our dreams and yous these unowing lucid dreamers to cotrol the dream world.

    try lelling some in your dream that thay are allso dreaming see what happends. when ever i
    tell some one in my dream that thay are allso dreaming these people who i call the dream keepers or agents come after me and try to wake me up.
    give it a try


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