There is an experience that completely changes the content of our being and transforms it into a force we cannot even assume to exist. If we start heating water, it will start to change, but that change will not be so significant for our soul until it exceeds 99 degrees centigrade. Degree by degree, that growth will not mean much in the quality of the water itself, and yet, when it exceeds 99 degrees and reaches 100, that one small degree will mean much more than the growth of all the previous degrees. That one degree will change everything – water will boil. By raising the same quantitative unit, as was the change from, for instance, 10 to 11 degrees, now, that same unit makes water change its nature in such a noticeable and unique way. Boiling is the growth of water, both quantitative and qualitative. The experience of lucid dreaming is that qualitative change in the Aspirant. And just as it can change quantitatively over the years growing from one degree to another, that quantitative growth will bring nothing so tremendous. However, finding yourself in a dream, experiencing a whole new awareness of a whole new reality, seems to bring a qualitative change in the mind, which will affect the Aspirant’s being for the rest of his life. This qualitative leap will direct us to a completely different quest; the search for ourselves. Yet, the search in the right direction is the search in the least likely place to look for – inside the Self.
For sure, the first important step in this matter is a complete understanding of the architecture and anatomy of a dream. It can be said that our shallow perception of what a sleeping and dreaming are, and the equation between these two completely different phenomena in general, is the condition of failure. We have high expectations to understand our own reality of being awake without even the slightest awareness of what is happening behind our own eyes.
Our whole being contains a system of levers of the highest enlightenment that could be found in the symbiosis of biological, physiological, chemical, and psychological processes in us that lie primarily in straightforward laws and ways in which these processes make what we call consciousness. All our trouble is that with the occult arts, we try bypassing something that is an entirely open channel in itself. It has taken so much time during which we have been really unable to say what is going on in our brains during quite ordinary things; apart from being able to perceive certain reactions, we are unable to answer how and why processes occur within the mind, and how certain information is processed and stored. One of such levers that we now know quite a lot about compared to only a few decades ago is our dreaming, that is, a period of brain activity called the REM phase or paradoxical sleep. And the more we know and learn, the less willing we are to utilize such knowledge for all that holds our art in the sphere of life’s interest — and that is the progress and illumination of being. We keep shedding light upon other paths, plains, and entities so much that we are not sure at all that they are anything beyond our own imagination and weakness. We forget that all the light is already inside ourselves, on and warm, but our eyes are focused on other and further heavens, and not those that have already been radiating and longing for that distant and vain look.
We will start from the very basic settings that emerged by complete coincidence: polygraph recording of the waking-sleeping cycle using electrodes implanted at the level of major brain structures and different muscle groups allowed two different states to be accidentally discovered (quite diametrical, to be more precise). One is a state of slow-wave sleep, followed by slow waves with large amplitude and preserved muscle tone. And the second is a state of deep sleep, which, paradoxically, is characterized by electrical activity of the brain, similar to that in the waking state, rapid eye movements, and complete absence of muscle tone. These are periods that were discovered in 1959 by my friend and researcher in the same field of interest – Professor Michel Jouvet and named paradoxical sleep – a name that properly indicates the nature of this condition. Anatomically, the waking system consists of a network of neurons, which stimulate the cortex through certain neurotransmitters during the waking state. In other words, we artificially maintain wakefulness, with the natural state of our brain being anything but that waking state for which we need constant neurological stimulation and effort to maintain. Our natural environment is the unreality of dreams, while this reality keeps being artificially caused throughout our lives. Everything takes place in such a way that numerous control mechanisms prevent the occurrence of paradoxical sleep, i.e., dreaming during the waking state and at the beginning of sleep, so paradoxical sleep can occur only if all activities of the structures in charge of stimulating wakefulness are stopped. Dreaming is accompanied by a significantly elevated alert threshold and almost complete paralysis. A deaf, blind and paralyzed being becomes very vulnerable; it can only dream if it is safe. Only then does it fall into deep sleep, which is a mechanism that manifests itself in our brain from the beginning of time. The direct transition from waking to paradoxical sleep is possible only with one illness – narcolepsy. The main feature of paradoxical sleep is atony of body position and rapid eye movements. It took too long for even the most suspicious to be convinced that onyric activity is not a continuous process during sleep but a completely periodic occurrence of paradoxical sleep. Neurophysiological experiments have clearly shown that paradoxical sleep is a state different from sleeping, with a significantly higher threshold of wakefulness than could even be assumed. Lucid dreaming occurs during paradoxical sleep, where the awareness that we are actually dreaming correlates with the high threshold of wakefulness that the state of dreaming has, but which we are unfortunately not aware of. It took a short time to get proof that lucid dreaming occurs only during paradoxical sleep, thanks to Dr. Stephen LaBerge and his experiments. The nature of dreaming is indeed completely paradoxical. Within that period and that reality, we have an utterly increased wakefulness, with our body being turned off. On the other hand, what is turned on is a world for which, in addition to all this wakefulness, we cannot recognize that it is unreal. We bring our own qualities and characters into that unreality by living it and acting in it like in this reality. We are so awake during the dreaming period that we are not even aware that we are dreaming. This is the true nature of this condition, which got named paradoxical sleep or paradoxical state of the brain long before it was called the REM phase. Indeed, dreaming is set as the third state of the brain, as different from sleep as sleep is different from the waking state, and all our efforts must aim in this direction at any cost. The nature of dreaming is paradoxical, and we must understand these heavens as a pond full of wild fish; we have to cultivate that pond down here, instead of looking up at those heavens as the worst failure of all Aspirants for centuries – in an attempt at something so paradoxical as achieving awakening of our being during wakefulness. Therefore, we will crush the paradox of dream with convenient meaningless methods, which are primarily simple and short. In a lucid dream, each attempt lasting more than a few minutes will be doomed to complete failure; such an act will either melt into insomnia or lead to complete awakening. There is nothing worse than finding that we have failed to implement any of that lucidity one morning, yet being overwhelmed by the excessive longing for a lucid dream and that our unconscious nature has managed to find a way to slip off the hook in the same way, imperceptibly, inconspicuously and skillfully, while it seems we have been waiting all the time in that pond for a fish with a rod without bait.
What is truly lucid in that morning is a very special neurosis that arises from the fact that we did achieve nothing, that is, the unrealistic belief that we actually did anything. It is lucid to know that the amount of work and effort is entirely and diametrically different from the success rate. The Aspirant may think that the more he works during the night, the greater are chances of finding himself in the magnificent astral realm, and it is in that lucid humor that his mind prepares, with the first rays of the sun, when he has been exhausted by hours of ultimately unsuccessful attempts. He realizes he has been fishing in a completely wrong place, with a completely wrong bait, and a wholly broken net. Everything is lucid, but his dreaming and that beautiful astral realm now seem to laugh and grin in his face, leaving him to all the beauties of the coming day to think and drown in his own failure. What I want from now on is to stop using terms such as astral projection or out-of-body experience; once you have pulled out at least a hundred lucid dreams, you will know for sure why. In such a pompous term as astral projection or the projection of the body of light, the only thing of all these pompous words that would really be worth underlining is light. But by no means stellar and distant light, unattainable and romantic. These are all metaphors of the same dark shadow that envelops human experience, interwoven with fear and misunderstanding of a completely natural phenomenon. The whole concept of getting out of the body is so meaningless for everyone once they have found themselves in a lucid dream and when they feel that fantastic, magical, and unique atmosphere of a conscious dream. All I have ever been convinced of after countless thousands of projections so far is that it is not about getting out of the body; in fact, it is not about the body at all. Everything is inside the mind, and we simply have nothing to look for beyond that in this place, but it is our own curse that by the mind, we mean a very small and hidden place. There is an entirely fantastic game of the mind that finds plasticine to imprint its own will while transiting to sleep. This is one of the true tasks we have before us, and before which we will by no means back off – to discover the trajectory of the soul inside this labyrinth, and instead of finding a way out, we actually find the soul.
Lucid dreaming is gain, not a gift; it is an ability, not an anomaly. It is the exploitation of a completely natural process; it is the ultimate economy of the movement of the spirit like a sail on a ship; ignorance of this indicates ignorance of the natural processes that take place within us. Therefore, all elements of this skill are absolutely opposed to ideas such as exercise, effort, or erudition.
The effort to practice this skill is an entirely ridiculous thought that is identical to the thought that you should practice pumping your own heart or that you should practice breathing, and continually reminding yourself of the importance of these movements your own life depends on. In fact, you are not the one beating your heart; you are not the one breathing. Your automatic organism breathes, and that has nothing to do with you. All the concentration is actually messing and poking your nose into the work of your accountant, which, sooner or later, leads to misunderstanding and failure, above all. Your heart and your lungs keep on doing their job. All the time you are neurotically trying to learn and pass on all this clumsiness to others, who, again, stumble upon all this, who breathe just like you and whose heart works in exactly the same way as yours. All our failure in this matter lies in the fact that we really have no knowledge of the two processes – the process of awakeness and the process of dreaming. In fact, we are furthest from realizing that there is no difference in these two events, which is actually just one. We are awake all the time. Indeed, how we can expect to know what a lucid dream is if we are not sure what awakeness is. Is it worth finding the mechanism of dreaming while we are not certain of our awake state and if we are not familiar with our own wake capabilities? How to expect to be lucid in a reality where we have not fully awakened yet?
These words are so important to begin with, and there is no movement that introduces the Aspirant more to the heavens of success in understanding one’s own awakeness than it is in understanding one’s own dream. In order to move forward, we must make a very clear distinction between consciousness and awareness. Consciousness is the object of awareness. Awareness is the subject of consciousness. All we are going to talk about here is how to get to completely different shores of awakeness, where we will find awareness. This sailing on the currents of our sleeping self requires us to really discern what happens when we fall asleep. To truly see, we shall close our eyes.
Each method is an agreed system of values that can logically fit into a particular attainment model. But this does not mean that this model contains that value exclusively because, in fact, for a free spirit, any method leads to any attainment. No matter what method, no matter what attainment. If you want to link two dots, you will not draw a line from the center; that would be terribly inappropriate. You will start either from one dot or the other; when these points are clearly defined, the line is obvious. However, the line itself is composed of a multitude of dots and is an entirely new attainment per se. It is by no means a method or a consequence of merging these dots; on the contrary, these dots are only a limited end of that line that connects them only with a limited value. Then, when they are connected by a line, these dots are no longer perceived; everything becomes just one line, that is, one attainment, where the one who attains is no more, as well as the one to attain to, nor any tools of attainment. Therefore, why would exercise in lucid dreaming have anything to do with attaining the lucid dream? Statistically, out of a thousand lines drawn randomly on paper, one will most likely connect those two selected dots. The problem is that the rough awareness at that moment implies and creates a model that these dots and that line are products of the will to merge them and that the intention is responsible for everything.
Practicing lucid dreaming does not contribute to attaining the lucid dream. Practicing lucid dreaming leads to lucid dreaming practice, is not that so logical? The more you practice, the more distance there is from the attainment itself. In other words, the more you practice, the harder it is to attain. The problem with most Aspirants is completely misstructured work. I am sure the best book on lucid dreaming would be the one about failures. No technique or method in our art is so misunderstood and misinterpreted as lucid dreaming, precisely because the whole approach is completely wrong and based on a completely broken mechanism. Once you learn to do the whole thing correctly, you will notice the devastating fact that most books are actually rewriting one and the same fantasy and that the vast majority is a complete magnificent lie that is no different from a fish story. The methods are completely wrong, and the tale of astral planes, beings, and the silver cord is usually an accurate indication that there is a liar and a fraudster in front of you.
It really does not take a lot of energy or time to get to a lucid dream. You should only learn to do a very simple and right thing at the right time. A dream is so much more a sublime place than elemental beings, angels, silver cords, the benevolent deceased who want to drink just another cup of tea with us. It is the place of your mind, so wider than all this. All the magnitude of the dream, that is, the astral plane, is exclusively in the phenomenon of consciousness, the phenomenon of time which is expanded by this experience and transformed into a completely different value. The way you will really use this holy moment is solely up to you; we are here to consider and attain it in an easy and natural way above all. By no means is it crucial to have a separate and accidental lucid dreaming or to get a lucid dream in the lottery. The jewel of true attainment is reflected in the awakening and development of a lucid consciousness, which, like any scientific method, will be able to be carried out under certain circumstances in precisely the same way, which we can prepare, repeat and modify at will.
Therefore, I will instruct you as I have instructed others so far, and I can offer you a bunch of examples where inexperienced minds have achieved lucid dreaming after the first or first few attempts. What still makes them good practitioners today is the fact that they have set a healthy model of their practice, which does not require too much time, or tedious and unnecessary activities such as visualization, working with the middle pillar, countless meditation and concentration techniques; it can all rather help you in the second part of our work when you need to persevere and stay conscious in your dream. Once you have had your first experience of lucid dreaming, just remembering that wonderful act will help you easily experience the second one, soon carrying on in a certain rhythm, making it a part of your life, not practice. You must live a lucid awareness, do not expect it humbly, hoping for something that your nature has already achieved and brought into your life – every night, every day, throughout the whole of your existence.
It is one thing to wake up in your dream. It is yet another to keep yourself awake in your dream. Actually, the latter is much harder, but for now, I want all your attention on the former. The experience of lucid dreaming is primarily conditioned by the economics of your movements. Life leads us to the fact that man is cursed by the desire to complicate simple things to the maximum. Lucid dreaming is an excellent example of such a cursed practice. Let us, therefore, define the strengths and weaknesses of this plan. The strengths are undoubtedly descriptions and transmissions of other people’s experiences, techniques, and observations, as long as they do not get into the field of theology, ideology, and sociology. It is actually essential for you to understand vividly that others are following the same goal and sharing the same mistakes with you. There is no better psychoanalysis than reading other people’s dreams. But since reading other people’s dreams is a luxury for you, for now, you will limit yourself to reading your own. Weaknesses are books; there is nothing so devastating as following instructions that lead to nothing, entire generations in this art endeavor to devote themselves to projections at bedtime, which is similar to making love without a male erection; it’s not that it’s impossible, but why on earth, when the whole mechanism is made to run smoothly when used differently.
To start with, the most important thing by far is to decide to succeed. Not to try or to keep trying, not to work on, but to complete and succeed. I want to start with the first point of your work, that is, the question of motive. It is an essential issue of all workings; it is a condition and the least common denominator of all progress and success. It is that atom of life, without which no action has any meaning. The question of motive is an essential issue for every act, from criminal to divine, and if you find a motive within a seemingly impossible endeavor, the whole act begins to radiate in such a different and lively atmosphere. But the question is how to find a motive for an experience that is so inconceivable and amazing? This incredibleness creates a drive within that pushes us forward, but at the same time, it radiates a completely dark and demoralizing shadow, the one that tells us that all this is possible for all but us, that of all God’s creatures, we are the only ones who are doomed to fail. Imagine the realization of children’s dreams, flying over buildings in the neighborhood or under the rainbow, imagine a sudden ascent to the clouds, a chase over the ocean. Imagine sitting in the clouds or peacefully floating in open space, getting to know your past life, metamorphosing into an animal, or some completely different form. To build such an appropriate motive, you do not need anything new; you just need to become a child. Again. But in your case, you have to work hard for it; your censor of reality will ruin your motive because it is but a stranger in your mind at the moment, and it will do everything to suppress and remove it. To prevent this, you need something concrete. You need a confirmation that you have set off on a journey. You need something tangible, something that will send a signal to your enthusiasm to grow and develop freely.
Haron-press 