So you wake up one morning, and you’ve just had one of the strangest dreams of your life. In fact, simply remembering a dream in the first place was strange, but the content was even stranger. What do you do? Most likely think about it for a minute or so, and then forget everything about it.

That is of course, if you’re like most of the US. I’m not sure about the rest of the world, but I know that here in the US of A, there is a decided non-importance placed on dreams. People probably wouldn’t even care about them at all if it wasn’t for the work of Jung and Freud. Many people are natural lucid dreamers, and have no idea what they could be using their dreams for. Most people don’t even remember their dreams, when they could easily be remembering at least a dream a night. Why this mass ignorance? Why do people give such little value and care to their dreams?

Society’s Values

Social norms are very anti-dreams at the worst, and at the best they consider dreams outside the norm. When you talk about dreams or anything related to a group of people, chances are you’ll get laughed at, maybe listened to for a little while, and then someone will change the topic. If, however, you talk to somebody one on one, chances are that they will want to talk about many experiences they’ve had that they haven’t had a chance to talk about. This is what my experience has shown, anyways.

The group smothers dreams, and the individual is left with nobody to discuss their experiences with. This leaves me with the conclusion that the perceived views of the masses influence the group dynamics of almost everybody, even when it is untrue for them.

So how do we combat this willful ignorance?
Spread the word about lucid dreaming! Tell people about why dreaming matters, and how it can be important in their own lives. Whether it be inducing lucid dreams, trying to dissect dream imagery, or just some entertainment for when you wake up, people can enrich their lives with their dreams. Get the word out by telling your friends about your favorite sites, like perhaps Dream Views, or Ld4all, or maybe even perhaps this humble blog.

Help remove the haze of ignorance that has smothered dreaming in society!
If you want to encourage people to spread the word, I’d be honored to have you spread this post around the dreaming community. The share button can help (it’s at the bottom of the page) or you could just link this article. Whatever your means, get the word out!

-Hatter

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I came across a telekinesis video on youtube, showing a very well done psiwheel video. It isn’t exactly proof, as videos can always be edited or he could be doing some clever trick, but I can’t think of how he’d trick us other than video editing. The video does however, have some glitches in it, which are debated in the comments. One of the most visible skeptics is Keith Mayes. He is a fairly well known outspoken skeptic of telekinesis, and that’s putting it nicely. (Psipog had a natural dislike of him, of course. I can’t say his attitude helped though) He’s the one claiming the video is fake. I think this one could be authentic, but I agree with him on the point that nothing can be proved by a video on the internet, or even by a video. I don’t think that those glitches in the film are as damning as he claims them to be, but they are rather strange. They are one of the few things that mar the video.

Here is the original video that Keith objects to.
Here is his response explaining why he thinks it is fake.

The controversy continues.

-Hatter

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I am in the process of becoming a vendor of the light and sound machines sold by MindPlace. I will be offering one Procyon, one Proteus, and one Sirius. These are all sound and light machines of varying price and complexity. Light and sounds machines use sounds like binaural beats and light patterns to help alter the user’s awareness. I will post the specific prices after I actually have the products. I will also have a Thought Stream, which comes with Mental Games. This is a machine that uses galvanic skin response (GSR) to determine stress levels etc. The games help you train your reactions. I’ll also have some audio CD’s for meditation and some accessories for the sound and light machines.

To give you an idea of how much they will cost, the sound and light machines and the GSR go anywhere from 100-270 USD. Since MindPlace already offers them for the price I am required to sell them for, I’ll thrown in some other neat stuff to give you an incentive to buy from me. Other than helping me, of course.

These sound and light machines are pretty well known, and have a very good reputation for quality and effectiveness. Please let me know if you’re interested in any of them.

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I stumbled upon this page explaining various types of methods for effecting brainwaves. Granted it’s on a site which is trying to sell you their product, so take that into consideration, but there is still lots of good brainwave info. For instance, I was unaware that there was anything beyond binaural beats as far as altering brain function. Apparently, the brain imitates almost any sound wave if given time. I find this fairly interesting, perhaps I’ll experiment with it some.

-Hatter

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Or is it? This article I saw over on Lucidipedia’s blog certainly seems to suggest so. The article talks about the author’s experiences with lucid dreaming, and experiencing “godhood.” He master’s lucid dreaming and no longer has normal dreams. He then commences to have the time of his life… for a while. After some time, the thrill actually does wear off, and lucid dreams become something I never could have imagined possible: Boring. He then strikes a pact with some dream characters and his lucid dreams cease. He says he is much more content no longer having completely controlled dreams. He then goes on to state that lucid dreaming gives the dreamer too much power over the dream, giving them the status of a god. In a world where nothing is uncertain and everything is had at a whim, nothing has value because of how easy it is to get. The author’s main point is that: “Absolute power bores absolutely”

I disagree with his analysis on the usefulness of lucid dreams after one has achieved godhood. I think there are several other directions to go.

(In no particular order)

1: Practice a regular skill in dreams. This is by far the most practical use of lucid dreams, and if you’re bored with them anyways, you might as well get some use out of them. I’d say that this is the most basic level of rebuttal to his statements.

2: Explore Shared Dreaming. You could pursue shared dreaming with a friend. If you could achieve shared lucid dreams, that friend could give you the thing that godhood lacks: Something that you can’t control. This could be a rather big point, but it hinges on the fact that shared dreaming is real.

3: Use lucid dreams to go out of body. I’ve read about dreams as a springboard to OBE’s many times, and have had limited success myself. If you are bored with the dream environment, you might as well go out of body. Even if it is simply a vivid dream as people suggest, at least it creates a dream in which you aren’t all powerful. This of course, also hinges on the nature of OBE’s and your belief.

4: Use lucid dreams for meditation. This idea comes from Tibetan Dream Yoga. The idea of a hierarchy of dreams is one that I am not completely on board with, but it is an interesting concept. That concept being that dreams are the result of Karma, and that once you remove the seeds of Karma by meditation, you have clear light dreams, which are simply no dreams at all. You then meditate to higher levels of consciousness to achieve a sort of transcendence. Even if you’re not in agreement with that idea, meditation is good, so using dreams for deep meditation couldn’t hurt.

5: Use dreams to get your subconscious to act. Dreams are an altered state of consciousness, one in which the subconscious is readily accessible. Using dreams to program the subconscious for tasks done in waking life isn’t a new idea, and can be readily applied here. Want to lose weight, become more confident, etc? Use lucid dreams to affirm that, or any other whim and the subconscious will act on it.

I think that lucid dreams are one of the greatest boons that is out there. I think it’s unimaginative to dismiss them as soon as you have complete control over them.

-Hatter

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Psi Experiments has released the details for the first experiment. The second is currently under way, and will continue until the end of the month.

The results were not favorable for psionics. The results have some odd trends in them though, the numbers aren’t anywhere near what probability would predict, and with 1500 responses, they should be closer. I, however, am more interested to see how the second round goes, as that is a better experiment bias-wise. Not that it is perfect, but it is closer.

In blog news, the podcast player broke somehow, so I’m banging my head against the wall trying to fix that.

-Hatter

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I have read many books by Carlos Castaneda, and have always been holding out that they may have actually been mostly truthful, or at the very least, had truth interspersed with many fictional sequences or exaggerations. This article, however, does a fairly good job of shattering any faith I had that his books weren’t fiction. There are some caveats I’d like to point out about his books though, which the article points out and which I will summarize:

Many ideas in his books aren’t completely his:
I’ve known this for a while as I’ve discovered many of the things from his books are actually borrowed from older religions. The model for the human energy body as an egg of fibers all connection at a certain point exists in Hinduism and Buddhism as well. It also has been recorded by people sighting others during out of body experiences.

His books lack important details:
One very interesting detail the article pointed out was that Castaneda doesn’t mention anything about pests in the deserts of Mexico. He and Don Juan apparently lived charmed lives in the desert.

He later founded what was a very strange organization resembling a cult:
After he disappeared from the mainstream public eye in the 70’s, he founded a very odd organization which was supposed to be based on the teachings of Don Juan. It was, however, apparently was used to manipulate people’s lives. After he died, his main ring of “witches” all disappeared. One of their bodies was found in a desert, proved by DNA testing. The others are suspected of having committed suicide.

While I find this news somewhat disappointing, it doesn’t really change my views on the books. They are excellent reading, and were a great motivator for me for getting into stuff like lucid dreaming and astral projection. They stretch your perception of the world and make you think in a broader sense of the world. I highly recommend the Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way Of Knowledge, A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, and The Art of Dreaming.

-Hatter

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I was looking over on brain wave generator’s site, and I decided to grab a preset for one of the more interesting frequencies out there, the Schumann Resonance (7.83Hz). This is close to the frequency the earth resonates at (it’s somewhere around 8 ) and it is supposed to be a good frequency to meditate to. This particular version is also constructed using the Harmonics Box technique, which is supposedly more effective then just using the normal frequency. The Harmonic Box method involves using multiple frequencies to get the same one. It’s somewhat complex. The full explanation is at the bottom of this post.
You can download an MP3 of it here, or the Bwgen file here.

While I was browsing the preset library, I also came across another pre-set called Omniversal, which goes through several other frequencies that are supposed to be useful for certain things. Overall it’s a giant conglomerate of frequencies which would be good for meditation, relaxation, or stress relief. You can grab the MP3 of it here, or the Bwgen file and the .wav background here.

NOTE: If you download the Bwgen you’ll need to also download the wav and put it into the folder for bwgen, which is typically at C:\Bwgen.

From a yahoo group about Bwgen.

Box X is a method of combining 2 different voices (actually 4, thus
the “box”) and entraining the brain using binaural AND monaural
beats. Harmonic (and half-harmonic) BoxX involves focusing on a
specific frequency and multiples of it. Harmonic Box X is an
incredibly effective way to entrain the brain. So far I’ve found that
it is at least 3 times as effective for me. The deep meditation ones
I made are very fast and effortless in execution. I might upload one
to the files directory if anyone is interested.

This is a quick way to make a harmonic box X (described by James Mann
in Awakening Mind I) in bwgen.

For this demo:
Take a desired binaural beat frequency of 15 (beat)
Take an audible pitch of 500 (pitch)

Step 1) Add voice 1, assign pitch and beat as above
Step 2) Add voice 2
Step 3) For voice 2 pitch, multiply beat by 2 and subtract from
pitch. So pitch - (beat * 2) or 500 - (15 * 2) = 470
Step 4) For voice 2 beat, multiply the voice 1 beat (15) by -1, which
would make it -15

And that’s it! You got yourself a harmonic box X

The pitches are now as follows:

V1: 507.5 | 492.5
V2: 462.5 | 477.5

507.5 - 492.5 = 15
462.5 - 477.5 = -15
492.5 - 477.5 = 15 [monaural]
507.5 - 477.5 = 30 [crossover freq]
492.5 - 462.5 = 30 [crossover freq]
507.5 - 462.5 = 45 [monaural]

I’ve found this to be particularly effective with Schumman
frequencies, using 7.83 as the base. Can produce some interesting
effects to say the least.

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Does anybody remember Infinity, by BenDrummin? The program that garuntees a lucid dream within two weeks time. It has a 100% success rate with over 700 participants, so if you haven’t checked it out, I’d recommend it.

The real news is about Paradiso, BenDrummin’s newest program. This is like Infinity, except that it focuses on creating your own personal dream paradise. This isn’t to say that it cannot give you a lucid dream, however. You could very easily put signs in your dream scape saying “you are dreaming” or have a dream character politely remind you. Ben also said that he thinks this program won’t be as intensive as Infinity, so no more Bootcamp! Paradiso is about to enter the beta testing period, so I would recommend signing up for the beta if you are interested. 4 Testers will be chosen randomly from that group. There is another way to get into the beta however. There is currently a contest going on in the thread, which is to describe your personal dream scape. It can be with words, a drawing, a painting, whatever media you prefer. There is only a day left for this contest though, so hurry!

EDIT: Paradiso is now out, and can be downloaded at dreamport.
Here is the dream scape I’m going to try and incubate. It’s very abstract, so it may be difficult. I hope I am able to at least get parts of it though, because all of it is designed to function in the dream world. For instance, the mirrors are for viewing facets of someone’s personality, as well as your own.

-Hatter

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I’m just posting this cool list I found on the LD4all forum. It is a nice list with links to a lot of different lucid dreaming techniques, as well as information and resources for all of them. Speaking of lists, how about a large list of tutorials about lucid dreaming. These are both great lists. I’d recommend checking out the first one if you want to browse through all (well, almost all) of the known lucid dreaming techniques. The tutorials are very good for in depth learning, once you select a specific technique.

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