Lucid dreams

The lucid dream is a dream in which the dreamer is aware of dreaming while dreaming.

We dream every time we sleep, and content of sleep, when we remember, there appears to be completely fantastic and unreal. Often sleep becomes scary content, and in this case we speak of a nightmare, a frightening dream that awakens us often. Sometimes, remembering a dream very real, we seem to have experienced what has happened in the dream, the emotions and memories are intense. Few of us, however, unable to control own dreams, acting in the dream of being aware of dreaming, directors of the dream itself and not just actors.

The ability to interact with their dreams, enjoy them in person, you can learn like any other mind control techniques. As with all other techniques of this type requires only perseverance and dedication and, of course, to the knowledge base of the method to be applied.

The techniques of lucid dreaming are inspired by a book published anonymously in 1867 entitled "Les Rêves et les Moyens de les direct; Observations Pratiques" ("Dreams and how to direct them: practical observations") and written by Leon Jean Marie Lecoq the Marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys. The book is very dense, 498 pages, and presents the author's experiences in learning how to direct his dreams.

The book is divided into three parts in the following format.

1. (Four Chapters): Ce qu'on doit s'attendre à trouver dans ce livre et comment fut the composite (What should I expect to find in this book and how it was made).
2. (Chapter Six): Ou, tout en rapportant les opinions des autres, l'auteur d'exposer les con-tinuity siennes (Where, in relation to others' opinions, the author continues to exhibit his)
3. (Eight chapters): Observations pratiques sur les rêves et sur les moyens de les direct (Comments on dreams and practical means of directing).

Overall the book is interesting but a bit 'noisoso and repetitive, because the description contains a huge number of dreams with the considerations in turn very detailed, the Marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys. This book had its followers, and you can say that all subsequent material was taken from this original text. The lucid dream was the subject of numerous studies and university research: Dr. Stephen LaBerge of Stanford University (LaBerge, Lucid Dreaming, 1986), Cecilia Green, Lucid Dreams published in 1968, Charles T. Tart of the University of California, who published several books on the subject.

The list of books on the market today is of course much longer, and many belong to the series "The lucid dream in a week." It is not difficult to get information about sleep shiny, but the best sources are those that I mentioned, and of course the work described in this article, the original source of the subsequent research on the subject.

Hypnosis can be very helpful in experiencing lucid dreams, and encouraging a process of learning lucid dreaming. If you can not just following the advice and the method of Saint-Denys, hypnosis can give the correct initial push.

The following extracts from the work of Saint-Denys, Hervey full on tips and techniques.

The technique and the work of Hervey Saint-Denys

This singular character had a particular obsession with dreams and began to write them from the age of thirteen. To be a boy, was very well organized, because it records the beauty of 20 books illustrated with colored figures, representing a set of 1946 nights, more than five years.

Record your dreams in writing, is a very simple way to remember them. Hervey Saint-Denys note that after 179 the night, there are no records relating to forget the dream. From that day onwards for the remaining nights, the dreams always remember facts. Hervey contends that the desire to remember the same dream while awake, led him to recall all the dreams made.

The first time I felt a sense of reality in the dream, it happened during the night duecentosettesima beginning of the recording of dreams and reproduced the duecentoquattordicesima.

Within a year he had come to make three dreams "real" four. (So not called lucid dreams, lucid dream because the name was by Frederik van Eeden, citing the marquis.)

Within fifteen months the process was complete, and Saint-Denys writes "... after that ..., I declare that I happen to abandon the illusions of a dream without finding, at least at intervals, the sense of reality.."

By the way, to better study the dreams the marquis was awake nights at regular intervals to see if at that time was dreaming or not. All of these awakenings, like dreams, were recorded and subsequently reported in the book, along with considerations of the author. If you can not learn much from this book that the method used by the author to explore dreams, it is worth reading.

The transition from wakefulness to sleep

A philosopher of Geneva, George Le Sage, they say the same about to go crazy, trying to surprise in his mind the transition from wakefulness to sleep, or rather the dream. ... He was wrong then simply did not understand that this fantasy, the dream was just at its beginning, and torturing their minds with a constant concern, arresting its spontaneous and natural course of ideas, without which the transition from wakefulness sleep can not be fulfilled. ".

Practical observation on dreams and ways of directing

Recall first few points of importance:

1. There dreamless sleep
2. Neither attention nor the will must necessarily be suspended during sleep

I think I'm quite sure you understand, this time, as you sleep and how the dream begins.

Continue to take examples from my notebooks.

I close my eyes to sleep thinking about some object that I noticed the same evening, in a shop on Via Rivoli, the arches of the street comes to my mind, and I see how bright the arches are repeated and drawing in the distance. Soon there is a snake covered with phosphorescent scales that shows the eyes of my mind. Countless images are the uncertain backdrop. Are still in the period of things confused. The square face and change very quickly. This long snake of fire took the appearance of a long dusty road, burnt by the sun in summer. I also walked, and awaken memories saddle Spain. Chat with a mule carrying the manta shoulders; a performance that makes me listen. The landscape is related to the main subject, from the moment the transaction from wakefulness to sleep is made. I am fully in the illusion of a lucid dream. I offered to mule a knife, which seems to please him, in exchange for a nice old coin that shows me when I was suddenly awakened from my sleep by an external cause. I slept for ten minutes, depending on the person who had woken up.

The transition from wakefulness to sleep may "be carried out gradually, without breaks in the chain of ideas, by which time, in a word, between these two states, a sort of interregnum intellectual. The eyes of the body close to the real world, which leave open the eyes of the spirit world of the imagination and memories. "

One of the surest signs of moving to lucid dream, is the appearance of vivid, sharp and colorful, and more sleep is deeper, the images are vivid and vice versa.

Precondition for direct dreams

And attention will keep you in the dream. For it is by the combined attention and desire in the dream that we call the first means to lead and to change the texture at will.

I never got to master all phases of a dream, I never even tried. But sometimes make use of their attention and their willingness to investigate some psychological phenomenon, to restrain or evoke pleasant image to stimulate the work of memory, drive the development of imagination, to change the course of ideas, these are the actions that are engaged with a real ease, when a certain habit has been established by the mind.

Reasoning and Judgement in the dream

There is a category of dreams where we reason with some accuracy, ... for example, those in which I put to good awareness of my real situation, to study the phenomena of sleeping my own sleep.

Memories and imagination in the formation of dreams

The mysteries of our memories are like huge underground where light penetrates better when the spirit has ceased to shine out. Not surprising that so if you review them in dreams people dead or absent for a long time, if you find yourself in detail in places visited, the tunes heard, or read entire pages of several years.

Hervey Saint-Denys contains the description of many dreams where the dreamer imagines how will your business or heatedly discuss things that affect him in daily life and says "Now, if you look good these dreams, they are not able to judge about things you already know, that only form in which they offered to us is new, they were, in a word, imagination and reason cleverly personified "

We must therefore admit, after repeated observations, that the imagination can work to such an amount of material supplied by memory, which comes in very unusual form of images together

Can therefore, believe that certain ideas artificially connecting to certain very specific feelings, you can take advantage of this bond to introduce in the dreams of the items you will be prepared for itself. You should not lose sight that there are two essential conditions for which these means are effective: ere to find a new sensation at the one who provokes the second not to provoke outside the desired circumstances, under the penalty neutralize the virtue. (In brief, again, as it does in the GNP, the sensations of emotions exclusively.)

Conclusions

It outlines three key conditions to get to be masters of illusions of their dreams.

Owning, sleeping, consciousness of sleep, a habit that is acquired very quickly simply because keeping a journal of dreams

Associate certain memories recall of certain sensory perceptions, so that the return of these feelings, combined during sleep, introducing the core of our dreams, ideas, images we have made supportive

These ideas contribute to self-images to form the pictures of our dreams, will use (which will never default when you know very well that you dream), to guide development in accordance with the principle that thinking is one thing to dream of

What are the implications of this discovery, and what the utility?

I will be allowed to answer that everyone finds useful what interests him, the only result of dreaming what looks good will be judged in itself highly useful to anyone we will enjoy. But I will not, and I never sought to reduce the size of a simple game a method applicable to the progress of science, as well as the inspiration of the imagination.

Today

Today the method is very popular and there is much literature on the subject.

LaBerge has also invented a device based on the emission of light to induce lucid dreams. Similar devices are marketed under different names on the Internet: simply search for "DreamLight lucid dream."

LaBerge uses a method that provides the reality check several times a day. For example, count the fingers of the people we meet, being very careful to always end on account of the fingers. This behavior continues in the dream and we can become aware of any discrepancy with the reality that you are dreaming. At this point the dream becomes lucid. (From wikipedia )

The advice of Hervey Saint-Denys always remain valid.

Do not expect immediate results.

If you really want to control your dreams, you must have patience and tenacity.