a historian's blog
Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 8:03 pm
I've been somewhat interested in lucid dreaming since I was a teenager (I'm now 23) but I have never made serious attempts to produce these experiences, although I do rather often have spontaneous, short and not very intense lucid-phases in my dreams.
During past year or so I have been reading literature on "Western esotericism" on which I'm planning to write my graduate thesis in history. This term is an umbrella term for a cluster of traditions reaching from the renaissance period to present, and all things "occult", "esoteric", "superstitious", "paranormal" etc. can be seen as parts of its area. While I made a minor research of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn - a secret society in England in the late 19th century - I came across a fascinating technique called "astral projection", which was considered a part of “higher magic” in that society. When I made a little more research, I found out that this technique was not practiced only by long gone occultists but is a vital phenomenon even today. So, that's how I found this webpage, and that's also how my early interest in lucid dreaming rose again.
I haven't read much about astral projection/OBE/lucid dreaming -techniques yet, but I'm eager to make attempts based on everything I already know. (I have read some books: Monroe's first book, Anthony Peak's The Out-of-Body Experience: The History and Science of Astral Travel, and - of course - Golden Dawn material concerning their rather complex and ritualistic approach.) So, during this week I have made two or three attempts to enter "the phase" as you call it here. This morning I had some kind of success.
Last night I went to sleep at two o’clock or so and was woken up around eight o’clock in the morning by noise from up the stairs: apparently a neighbor above my room was drilling a concrete wall for some reason. Soon the noise stopped and I – the circumstances being appropriate – decided to attempt to induce an out-of-body –experience.
I lay on my back, the room was dim and warm and there wasn’t much noise anymore. I relaxed using a method familiar to me from a book on hatha yoga: I concentrated to my toes and relaxed them at will, then moving the concentration point upwards through whole my body, including my face, until I was in a deep relaxation and lost my sense of position. My eyes were closed and I stared in to the darkness of my eyelids. I stayed in that state, in total stillness, for maybe ten minutes or so, trying to induce some sort of state of near-sleep. Then I concentrated my thoughts on my hands and imagined moving them before my eyes while my physical hands lay there, immobile. I could “feel” the movement of these “thought-arms” and tried to visualize them, but this didn’t work. Then I tried something that I’ve also tried earlier this week: I grabbed my chest with these thought-arms and tried to pull myself “out of my body”. Like earlier, at the same moment that I started to “pull” (merely imagining this pulling, no physical muscular action was involved) my physical body began to shake (this time my muscles seemed to be involved) and my heart rate increased rapidly. This was a very peculiar feeling: it really felt like something was trying to separate from my physical body but couldn’t do it. After couple of attempts I stopped pulling and the shaking simultaneously stopped. I returned to the earlier stable relaxation. Then I tried to “roll out” (in the way I assume Monroe did it), but it didn’t even induce same sensation as “pulling”. I also tried some other techniques, without success.
With these attempts I was trying to induce an out-of-body –experience, but now I began to attempt lucid dreaming (here I assume these as different things) by trying to put myself into sleep without losing my consciousness in the process. But I couldn’t do it and after ten or fifteen minutes I became bored and chanced my position several times. A good try but no success, I thought, and tried to sleep normally instead. But – I don’t actually remember/know how this happened – soon I found myself sleeping – and being lucid. I was very exited in this dream, although it was kind of a deflated and thin “world” and I was constantly in danger of waking up and coming conscious of my physical body and surroundings: every time this started to happen, the dream-landscape started to fade off and turn into the blank blackness of my shut eyelids. But with some struggle I could keep myself inside the dream. And it was a strange dream. There were odd people – very vague, impersonal, constantly changing shapes – and the general atmosphere was somewhat melancholic. But as I knew I was dreaming, and I remembered my intention to discover this “world” and its phenomenology, I began to make some tests. At my will I tried to build colourful and beautiful surroundings: it worked quite well for a while, but – as I mentioned – it felt kind of a “thin” and not very intensive. The landscape was beautiful but not vivid, although it had - if I remember correctly (I should have written this in the morning - now I'm not so sure what it actually was like and what I can say about it with certainty) - depth and feeling of distance, as if I had been watching down from the top of a mountain. And I couldn’t keep anything solid even for one moment: everything was in constant movement. Then I tried to see myself in the dream by looking down, but this was impossible. I couldn’t get a visual contact to my “body” and if I tried hard I started waking up.
All this was very interesting and it was my first intentionally induced lucid dream that I have experienced, or at least closest to one. But I apparently fell deeper into sleep, because when I finally really woke up, I noticed that I had been sleeping for three hours. But it’s a start. I think I’m going to read more about these things – especially Radugas book – and perhaps begin to practice “phasing” on a regular basis.
During past year or so I have been reading literature on "Western esotericism" on which I'm planning to write my graduate thesis in history. This term is an umbrella term for a cluster of traditions reaching from the renaissance period to present, and all things "occult", "esoteric", "superstitious", "paranormal" etc. can be seen as parts of its area. While I made a minor research of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn - a secret society in England in the late 19th century - I came across a fascinating technique called "astral projection", which was considered a part of “higher magic” in that society. When I made a little more research, I found out that this technique was not practiced only by long gone occultists but is a vital phenomenon even today. So, that's how I found this webpage, and that's also how my early interest in lucid dreaming rose again.
I haven't read much about astral projection/OBE/lucid dreaming -techniques yet, but I'm eager to make attempts based on everything I already know. (I have read some books: Monroe's first book, Anthony Peak's The Out-of-Body Experience: The History and Science of Astral Travel, and - of course - Golden Dawn material concerning their rather complex and ritualistic approach.) So, during this week I have made two or three attempts to enter "the phase" as you call it here. This morning I had some kind of success.
Last night I went to sleep at two o’clock or so and was woken up around eight o’clock in the morning by noise from up the stairs: apparently a neighbor above my room was drilling a concrete wall for some reason. Soon the noise stopped and I – the circumstances being appropriate – decided to attempt to induce an out-of-body –experience.
I lay on my back, the room was dim and warm and there wasn’t much noise anymore. I relaxed using a method familiar to me from a book on hatha yoga: I concentrated to my toes and relaxed them at will, then moving the concentration point upwards through whole my body, including my face, until I was in a deep relaxation and lost my sense of position. My eyes were closed and I stared in to the darkness of my eyelids. I stayed in that state, in total stillness, for maybe ten minutes or so, trying to induce some sort of state of near-sleep. Then I concentrated my thoughts on my hands and imagined moving them before my eyes while my physical hands lay there, immobile. I could “feel” the movement of these “thought-arms” and tried to visualize them, but this didn’t work. Then I tried something that I’ve also tried earlier this week: I grabbed my chest with these thought-arms and tried to pull myself “out of my body”. Like earlier, at the same moment that I started to “pull” (merely imagining this pulling, no physical muscular action was involved) my physical body began to shake (this time my muscles seemed to be involved) and my heart rate increased rapidly. This was a very peculiar feeling: it really felt like something was trying to separate from my physical body but couldn’t do it. After couple of attempts I stopped pulling and the shaking simultaneously stopped. I returned to the earlier stable relaxation. Then I tried to “roll out” (in the way I assume Monroe did it), but it didn’t even induce same sensation as “pulling”. I also tried some other techniques, without success.
With these attempts I was trying to induce an out-of-body –experience, but now I began to attempt lucid dreaming (here I assume these as different things) by trying to put myself into sleep without losing my consciousness in the process. But I couldn’t do it and after ten or fifteen minutes I became bored and chanced my position several times. A good try but no success, I thought, and tried to sleep normally instead. But – I don’t actually remember/know how this happened – soon I found myself sleeping – and being lucid. I was very exited in this dream, although it was kind of a deflated and thin “world” and I was constantly in danger of waking up and coming conscious of my physical body and surroundings: every time this started to happen, the dream-landscape started to fade off and turn into the blank blackness of my shut eyelids. But with some struggle I could keep myself inside the dream. And it was a strange dream. There were odd people – very vague, impersonal, constantly changing shapes – and the general atmosphere was somewhat melancholic. But as I knew I was dreaming, and I remembered my intention to discover this “world” and its phenomenology, I began to make some tests. At my will I tried to build colourful and beautiful surroundings: it worked quite well for a while, but – as I mentioned – it felt kind of a “thin” and not very intensive. The landscape was beautiful but not vivid, although it had - if I remember correctly (I should have written this in the morning - now I'm not so sure what it actually was like and what I can say about it with certainty) - depth and feeling of distance, as if I had been watching down from the top of a mountain. And I couldn’t keep anything solid even for one moment: everything was in constant movement. Then I tried to see myself in the dream by looking down, but this was impossible. I couldn’t get a visual contact to my “body” and if I tried hard I started waking up.
All this was very interesting and it was my first intentionally induced lucid dream that I have experienced, or at least closest to one. But I apparently fell deeper into sleep, because when I finally really woke up, I noticed that I had been sleeping for three hours. But it’s a start. I think I’m going to read more about these things – especially Radugas book – and perhaps begin to practice “phasing” on a regular basis.