Lucid dreaming or Desire dreaming ?

 

I had read a lot about lucid dreaming but never experienced it or made an effort to do so. However on once occasion, I was experiencing a normal dream and suddenly I realized that this was a dream and I decided to have some fun. I was standing by a road side, so I thought to myself, since this is just a dream, I cannot die in this, and stood in the middle of the road, waiting some vehicle to hit me !! Unfortunately none come along and I awoke from the dream.
However recently I have begun to realize, that on several occasions, during the past several weeks, I am experiencing different kind of ‘lucid dream’. It usually happens in the morning when I am about to wake up. I would call it a lucid dream created purely by my suppressed/unconscious/latent desires – a Desire Dream
For instance one of my passions, as a child and teenager was to become a dancer. I would often dance behind closed doors and imagine getting a big applause from an imaginary audience!! I am still fond of dancing, and do indulge in it sometimes in the privacy of my home.
Recently I dreamt that I was with someone, not sure who it was, I was filled with a desire to dance, and next I was wearing traditional dress and dancing, I wanted an audience, and the next moment there were some people looking at me with admiration. I was half awake during this entire experience, the conscious mind then took over, became got slightly embarrassed by the self-indulgence of this ‘desire self’ and the ‘dream’ ended. I think that this is different from the lucid dream I had about the road, because this dream was created and spurred on purely by desire with no thinking brain involved. It was very spontaneous, as if I was thinking into existence what I desired. Almost like magic !!

I feel we acess different levels/dimensions of consciosness or sub-consciousness during normal dreams, lucid dreams, desire dreams and hypnogogia. The contents of which are probably determined by the state of our minds during waking consciousness.

Notes:

“In Kabbalah dreams are divided into three categories.

The first is concerned with immediate events. This means those involving the three triads centred upon the Yesodic-ego that often carry over into sleep the momentum of mundane activities, such as dreaming that one is still driving a car after a long journey.

The second order is of a deeper nature and is focused upon Tiferet-Self. Here issues of the soul and the individual’s integrity are brought out of the unconscious and projected into the screen of Yesod during sleep so that the ego’s attention is awakened to the problem. …

The third order of dream, in Kabbalah, is called prophetic. … The greater prophets were considered to be awake when they were given these visions. … According to tradition, the soul, during sleep, is free to wander in the World of formation, although the physical connection is never broken. Many dreams have the quality of ‘astral travel’ …

Individuals of a greater development ascend to the upper face of Yezirah and the lower face of Beriah or the transpersonal realm of the Spirit. Here the most highly evolved individuals commune with the Divine during deep sleep and receive revelations ‘face to face’, as the Bible puts it. However, as in everything Kabbalah urges balance, for to become too preoccupied with dreams is to live in the wrong world … and therefore only those dreams that are naturally remembered should be noted. This was the psyche’s original intention. To examine every dream can become obsessional, like X-raying our alimentary canal every time we have a meal.” – Zev ben Simon Halevi, Kabbalah and Psychology, Gateway Books, 1986

According to P.D. Ouspensky, “it is necessary to understand clearly that sleep may be of different degrees, of different depths. We can be more asleep or less asleep, nearer to the possibility of awaking or further from the possibility of awaking.

According to Paul Burnton -

Our waking life is really a kind of sleep, from which we need to wake up.Wakeful life represents only the peak of an iceberg which thrusts itself above the surface. We must study the iceberg as a whole if we would understand its meaning adequately. We may by watching the workings of our own mind in its three phases of sleep, dream and wakefulness, and not by limiting our investigation to the last phase alone, arrive at better understanding of its profounder problems.

The condition which lies between sleeping and waking is not only extremely interesting … but also extremely important, for it is very receptive to suggestion. This infinitesimal intermediate point on the verge of sleep offers a unique opportunity for the practice of concentration. … The final trend of thought held firmly and clearly in consciousness whilst one falls asleep is taken up by the deeper level of mind, which then works upon it in its own mysterious yet effective way. This strange mental power may be utilized to exercise control over dream life. The opportunity to develop it and to free it from foolish or even evil experiences exists within the ante-room of the nightly return to sleep, particularly for those who are more or less habitual dreams.

 

Hypnogogia, earth’s magnetic field, nakshatra and the moon

About a two years ago, I read somewhere that the moon and its phases influence human imagination and consciousness. This made me wonder if the moon influences hypnogogic experiences. I then began to make of note of the position of the moon in its lunar mansions (nakshatra) and the phase of the moon in my dream diary. However the notes were more or less random and only in a few cases I was able to record the nakshatra.  I hope to be more systematic in my future observations. I have given below some of these jottings:

8th Feb, 2006, four days before full moon, moon in Taurus, Mrigshirsha nakshatra, just before falling asleep I was very exhausted and my knees were aching – I was in the courtyard of some kind of an ancient stone temple. The stones were darkish metamorphic type. I was looking at a small waterfall flowing down stone steps at the center of the courtyard. I was filled with a feeling of deep serenity.
 
March 4th/5th day after new moon, afternoon nap – Saw the face of an old man with a beard, long narrow nose, probably European, the hair and beard style appeared to be from the Renaissance period. The whole image seem to be immersed in some kind of a yellowish glow.
 
8th March, morning, six days before full moon – Woke up with the following words in my head:
‘Madwaana historic consciousness of Mankind’.
 
I later checked the internet and found a Mt. Madwana in northern Canada among native Indian reserve area. It could also be an acronym for Mt. Damawand in Iran. This mountain is of great importance in Persian mythology.
 
9th March morning, five days before full moon – A sentence ringing in my head, could not fully recall but it ended with ‘ St. Minohnah/Minonah.’
 
It is probably a Jewish word and also the name of a lake in the USA.

 

 

 

Yesterday (moon in Cancer, Nakshatra-Aslesha, one day before new moon) I was sleeping in East-West direction with my head towards the East, not intentionally, but our sofa happened to be aligned in that direction. And just as I was waking up the following sentence arose/entered my head -’ We have yet to see the reversal of many rivers’.

For the past few days the TV was full of news of how the Kosi river in the state of Bihar (I live in India) had changed it’s course spelling havoc by floogind large tracts of land. Also, just before falling asleep I was thinking over the various theories related to hypnagogia. Now the question is whether the above sentence has a symbolic or literal meaning.

 However, I experienced no hypnogogic experience today (moon in Leo, nakshatra – Magha, new moon) during my afternoon nap, instead I woke up with a headache !! Could this be because my head was towards the west instead of east today ? Does the magnetic field of the earth effect hypnogogic experiences ? Does the Moon effect hypnogogic experiences ? After reading the paper, quoted below, I think that there is a possible connection.  I now plan to make a note of these things and see if any such relationship exists.

Notes:

In a recent article titled, ‘ Hypnagogia – A bridge to other realities’ the writer,  Yu -Wen Shaw, mentions :

“A possible physical explanation for Hypnagogia is rooted in the discovery of magnetite crystals in cells of the brain and meninges. It has been found that there are five million magnetite crystals per gram in the human brain, and twenty times that number in the meninges . These ‘biomagnetite crystals’ are oriented in the brain in a manner that maximizes their magnetic moment, thus allowing the crystals to act as a system, and marking the ability of the brain to sense energy fields . These crystals could very possibly be the cause and explanation behind psychic abilities, as well as the feelings of intuition during states of hypnagogia.

Let us further explore how this phenomenon may be possible. Studies that show the proximity of the crystal-containing brain cells to the pituitary and pineal glands, have led researchers to propose that these glands may use information from the earth’s magnetic field to regulate the release of hormones in the brain, thus directly controlling conscious awareness levels .”

it is possible that there are several parameters, both within the human mind/consciousness and environmetal/cosmic forces which influence hypnogogic experiences. A systematic and scientific study spanning various individuals over a long period of time needs to be done before any conclusions can be drawn.

Appendix:

Nakshatra: A nakshatra or lunar mansion is one of the 27 or 28 divisions of the sky, identified by the prominent star(s) in them, that the moonpasses through during its monthly cycle, as used in Hindu astrology.

A Hypnagogics Diary: Hypnogogia and light sleep

While I have been keeping a dream diary which mostly includes my hypnpgogic/pompic experiences (hence forth referred to as hypnogogic to include both gogic and pompic), I have decided to put them up on my blog as well.

As I look back i realise that I used to indulge in a lot of day dreaming during my childhood days. In addition, as mentioned earlier, I used and continue to have very vivid dreams, some of which I used to note down.

Several years later, when I was in my 30s I began to note a subtle change in the kind of dreams I had at night during deep sleep and the kind of half awake visions and impressions I would get duing my afternoon naps. My naps were, and continue to be, restricted to 20 minutes to half an hour, and are rearely deep sleep states. When I first noticed this change, unlike the normal dreams I had during the night, the afternoon ones were like a string of conscious thoughts trailing off  into visuals in my mind of unfamilar places and locations.  This continued for several years. However duing my early fortys when I had to shift to Delhi with my two sons and was under a lot of emotional and physical stress that I began to experience really vivid hypnogogic imagery, again, during my afternoon naps (some of these have been describe in my previous posts).

After years of experience I can now conclude that majority of my hypnogogic images and words occur duing my afternoon naps and a few, mostly related to words or sentences occur  when I wake up in the morning.

Hypnopompia and Hypnogogia diary -I

After a perod of several days I have begun to experience hypnopompia and hypnogogia during my afternoon naps.
Two days ago I heard ‘ Raaze takhta bafazaa’ This is Persian but the meaning is not very clear. I checked the dictionary and it means something like – a secret plate/board/writing/ in the air/space.

Yesterday afternoon, while I was half awake the following words were ringing in my ears – ‘Deep among the trees so deep, a tearful drop down let her slip/sleep…’
Today afternoon I saw the face of a young man (probably Caucasoid) wearing a baseball cap. The face seem to be on a T.V screen and the foreground seem to be covered with some writing in English.

Antenna of the unconscious mind

My experiences with the prophetic power of hypnogogia leads me to believe that everything in the lives of ordinary people like us is pre-determined according to the law of karma. As mentioned earlier in a previous post, I often dream of minor everyday things like a word or an image which I then come across in the course of few days in real life. Only last night I dreamt about Niagra Falls, saw a visual image of it, and today while watching TV, I chanced upon a programme on Zone Reality channel, it was titled ‘hunting legends’ or something, in which an American – Mason Whinefield was investingating paranormal phenomenon in western part of New York State, and the site in question was in the proximity of Niagra Falls and according to Mason, the Falls might be one of the reasons for the presence of strong spiritual/psychic current in that area. I had never watched his programme before, nor did I have a pre-knowledge of such a programme being aired on Zone Reality.

So the question which comes to mind is whether even the minutest things in our lives are pre-determined ? And whether it is just a question of being able to tune into the right kind of frequency to be able to  forsee our future ?

Is it also possible that due to my deep interest in the spiritual and occult, my unconscious mind is able to tune into, and inform the conscious mind about things/people/events that are related to this area, that I will chance upon in the future ?

During the course of my study of occult and spiritual subjects, there have been numerous co-incidences, which are too many to be called ‘chance events’ where I would come across the books/websites/references related to my interest with hardly any   effort or search. Perhaps the unconscious mind does have some kind of an antenna which leads us to the things/people that are related to the thoughts and feelings that pre-occupy our hearts and minds……