Written by SHADOXSTAR 18 July 2004

Stephen LaBerge, a sleep researcher at Stanford University, published his book Lucid Dreaming in 1986. A couple years later I checked it out of the Portland State University library, because it looked cool.

The dreamer in a lucid dream is “consciously” (or semi-consciously) aware that he or she is dreaming. As a result the dreamer can manipulate the dream and learn from it.

Our hero: A geeky but sincere 19-year-old virgin college Freshman searching for his place in the universe. A nerd with little personal power drawn by the promise of super-powers, if only in a dream-state.

The book: A powerful tool for cosmic understanding; too powerful for our hero, as it turned out. I read the book as I read all books back then; skipping over the boring parts, speed-reading the rest, letting my imagination fill in all but the “gist”.

I determined to become a Dream Master. A Sleeping God. I gave a less ambitious explanation to my friends to avoid appearing insane. I told them about an “experiment” I planned to do as a “Sleep Astronaut”. They told me it sounded cool and proceeded to give accounts of “waking dreams” they’d had sometime around puberty; the nature of which was about what you might expect from teenage boys. I disregarded such dreams as being “unscientific” and proceeded with my preparations.

I bought a notebook (my “Dream Journal”) and a spicy meal. I want to say the meal consisted of a chicken-cheese burrito with LOTS of hot sauce, but my memory is fuzzy. It was some kind of “belly-bomb” that I ate just before climbing into bed. While falling asleep I repeated a mantra to God and/or myself that I wanted to have a lucid dream. Please, please, let me have a waking dream, etc. It is odd: Upon reflection I’m not sure to whom (if to anyone) this “prayer” was directed.

I woke the next morning refreshed but disappointed. No lucid dream. Stubbornly, I set the alarm for another hour. (I missed an Electronics Engineering II lecture. No loss, since I would later change my major 4 times.) I forced myself back to sleep and this time succeeded.

My first lucid dream lasted just long enough for the following events to take place:

1. I became aware that I was dreaming. Such joy!

2. I tried to fly but failed miserably, achieving only a series of bouncing high-jumps. Fun, but not quite flying.

3. I lost the “extra” awareness, returning to straight-dreaming, and got tangled in overhead power lines during one badly-aimed bounce-jump.

4. I woke shuddering from the after-effects of my imaginary “electrocution”. (For some reason it didn’t occur to me that birds can perch unharmed on insulated power lines.) I showered, dressed my still-quivering self, and headed off to my EE II class to beg, borrow, or steal a copy of a classmates notes.

The trauma of electric shock was not enough to dissuade me from continuing with my plan. (I passed Electronics Engineering II that term with a ’C’. I did not go on to take EE III). My spicy-food induced dreaming of the next couple weeks fared a little better. My dream-journal from 1988 reveals a pattern of partial success with frustrating and unexpected twists. Today I recognize in this pattern a wise master’s compassionate but firm suppression of an unprepared student‘s foolish eagerness.

Experiment: Try to walk through walls.

1988 Results: The walls disappear before I get to them. While this makes it easy to pass through them, it is not the point of the experiment. Dang.

Some thoughts, 2004: This “sabotage” of my dream experiment teaches that measuring success as the act of walking through a wall contrary to “real-life” laws is foolish. Superpowers are nice but not what I needed at that time in my life. It is better for a 19 year old loser to learn to deal with the wall.

Experiment: Try to pass one arm through the other.

1988 Results: Failure. The skin is not a problem, but the “bones” of the arms” (or something like bones) get in the way. Perhaps I do not “believe” it can be done enough to do it. However, I can put my hand into my forehead and feel a marble-sized region within my brain (no jokes, please) just as impenetrable as the bones of my arm. This second result may indicate something other than a “lack of belief” is the problem.

Some thoughts, 2004: In 1988 I had some fuzzy ideas about the “soul” having parts that might “manifest” in the dream world. The “bones of the arm” and the “brain sphere” corresponded to parts of the multi-dimensional soul. I think if I repeated the experiment today I might get different results. I now suspect that expectations create dream-realities, so perhaps it was belief rather than lack of belief that interfered with this experiment. It is important to remember that the Dream World is NOT virtual reality.

Experiment: Turn on a light switch, changing the “brightness” of the dream.

1988 Results: Turning on a light switch always results in my instantly waking up. This failure repeated three times this morning before I gave up.

Some thoughts, 2004: A few years later in Army Basic Training my Drill Instructor would turn on the barracks lights 5 minutes before he stomped in yelling and flinging things around. I would already be awake, the light on my face sufficient to rouse me, no matter how tired I was. Increased light, for me at least, means stop sleeping now!

Experiment: Do math problems.

1988 Results: Success, maybe. I felt while dreaming that I successfully solved some simple math problems, but when I wake I cannot remember what the problems were, so there is no way to check my answers.

Some thoughts, 2004: In 1988 I earned an ’A’ in Calculus II. Today I use a calculator to add simple numbers in my checkbook.

Experiment: Read a book.

1988 Results: Partial success. Reading in my dreams is so cool! The words constantly shift, blur, change. What I manage to glimpse gives me a sense of seeing something profound and true. I catch short bursts of the most amazing stories, and flashes of wisdom from unknown sages living in unknown places. Naturally I can’t remember any of it when I wake, but I retain the sense of having enjoyed some of the BEST writing the universe has to offer.

Some thoughts, 2004: Lately I listen to talk radio while driving home from work late at night. The opinions expressed on those crappy shows can hardly be considered “the best the universe has to offer” but I still have hope that there exists universal “broadcasts” of wisdom that can be accessed somehow in the dream-state, perhaps by reading dream-books. Do I believe this? No. Do I wish it were so? Yes.

Experiment: Talk to a Dream-Being to gain wisdom.

1988 Results: Success, sort of. My dream-self is a horny bastard. No matter how serious the conversation is at first, (and I seem to remember them always being about something profound) they always ends up with me having sex. I can not remember the conversations, but I can remember a little bit of the events leading up to the orgasms.

Some thoughts, 2004: This is pretty amazing considering that I was still a virgin. It is less amazing if you believe that all beings in a dream are externalized aspects one’s self. What I needed, at 19, was not cosmic knowledge but simply to get laid. Perhaps that was the substance of the conversations; who knows?

Experiment: Alter my body’s shape.

1988 Results: Amazing success! Making my dream-body “female” was easier than I’d expected. Stretching my limbs to enormous lengths was also easy. Shrinking was a bit different; I’m not sure if my body shrunk or if the surroundings grew larger.

Some thoughts, 2004: The ease with which I became “female” did not make me question my sexuality. Even back then I knew that males were simply genetically modified females, and that without my Y chromosome I would have followed the “default” female pathway in my mother’s womb. My comical elastic limbs in the second part of this experiment gave me hope that I would soon acquire better super-powers.

 Experiment: Count as high as I can.

1988 Result: Success, limited. I can count, slowly and with difficulty, quite a ways (over a hundred) before something (someone?) sends me back to true sleep. I actually feel now that this reversion from lucidity back into unaware dreaming is exerted upon me externally, and not through any choice of my own “dream-self“. I didn’t notice this in my earlier dreams; I just assumed that if I just concentrated harder I could stay in the lucid state longer. Now I think that I have an “allotted” time for lucid dreaming, dictated by the whims of what I sense is a disapproving dream-control-mechanism. I can almost feel my dream-surroundings grow angry with me, as though I were a disobedient child discovered out of my crib, wandering the house in the middle of the night.

Some thoughts, 2004: This experiment spelt the beginning of the end for my Lucid Dreams for many years afterward. My sense that something begrudged my conscious visits to the Dream World increased, as did my exhaustion during the days following my dream-sessions. I began to realize that I didn’t feel as rested after a Lucid Dream. Too many nights in a row had passed, and I needed true sleep. Now I suspect that I was 1) just running up against the time limit dictated by the duration of REM sleep or 2) my wiser unconscious Self knew that dream superpowers and cosmic wisdom were not what I needed at that stage of my life. At 19 young men are supposed to be participants in life’s adventures, and not world-shapers. You cannot go on a journey if you never get out of bed.

The final straw was an experiment that went too far. I knew, as I have said, that I could alter my dream-body. I knew I could alter in small ways the people and things within the dream-environment. I’d always known that I could stop a “bad” dream and start another “good” dream, one of my choosing.

What I decided to do was try to erase the dream entirely, to experience a lack of dream-environment. I imagined it would be something like a white emptiness upon which I could “paint” whatever I desired. No matter what your theories are about the nature of dreams, this is NOT a good thing to do.

I did it. I commanded the world of the dream to vanish. My wish was granted, to my horror. I felt such a crushing loneliness and terror and a sense of abandonment that I thought I‘d die. I cannot describe any visual memories of “lack of dream-world” but the feeling was that of eternally falling into sucking emptiness. It was like drowning, I think. When people talk about black holes I don’t imagine the cartoony drawings on PBS’ NOVA. I imagine instead those awful sensations I had during that final lucid dream in 1988. Thank the universe I woke up.

I didn’t write any notes about this last dream in my dream journal. I knew I’d never forget it. I stopped trying to become a controller of life and took up with enthusiasm my role as a participator in life. I got plenty of rest, enjoyed the hell out of my life’s many unexpected plot-twists, and haven’t once regretted my decision to lay down my dream-journal. I know that now I am better prepared to take it up again. I do not approach the dream-world seeking power. I seek rather to visit quietly with an older, wiser friend and maybe get a word or two of advice on how to better play my role in this life. I think things will go better this time.