A student of Alan's who is a friend of mine sent me this link to a lecture by B. Alan Wallace on lucid dreaming and related topics. I thought it would be well-received by the Psience Quest community, so I'm sharing it here in turn (it's an audio file in mp3 format):
https://media.sbinstitute.com/_dl/lectur...905-EN.mp3
Here are some summary notes of the lecture:
Three state-checks for testing whether you're dreaming:
1. Read something, then remove it from your field of vision, bring it back, and read it again. In a dream, it will be different from one reading to the next.
2. Pull on your nose: in a dream it won't have any cartilage and will extend like Pinocchio's.
3. Find a flat platform and jump up. In a dream, you are likely to gently float down, or simply float.
There are also dream signs: common themes personal to each of us that indicate when we are dreaming. e.g., Showing up to a lecture and being totally unprepared. Being in an airport and finding you've left your passport at home, or can't find your luggage, and time is running out.
Three entry points to lucid dreaming:
1. Dream-induced: you recognise something within a dream as bizarre or improbable, and this triggers you to recognise that you are dreaming.
2. Waking-induced: you recognise that you're waking up and about to crest into the waking process, and then go back into the dream and retain continuity.
3. Mnemonic-induced: setting an advance intention to state-check in a dream, and then carrying out that state check in the dream and determining that it is in fact a dream.
Two methods to stay in a lucid dream:
1. Spin around.
2. Rub your bottom (body? I might have misheard this).
Two methods for walking through walls in a lucid dream if you keep on getting stuck in the middle of the wall:
1. Close your eyes just before reaching the wall.
2. Walk into the wall backwards.
Lucid dreams are solely products of our minds, and we can learn to control them; to emanate and transform, including our own forms, e.g., to transform ourselves into a butterfly; to emanate Einstein so that we can have a conversation with him, though he will not be able to tell us anything that we don't already know, since he is purely an emanation of our own minds.
Lucid dreams, as purely products of our own minds, cannot possibly harm us.
Human consciousness is conditioned by and dependent on the human brain. The Buddhist hypothesis is that underlying human consciousness is a "stem" consciousness akin to the stem cells of biology: it can be configured into any specific type of consciousness as conditioned by material reality, such as by a human brain or by a reptile brain.
In a lucid dream, if you stop acting and be still, you stop dreaming and enter a state of dreamless sleep. In this state, which can be trained for using contemplative and meditative techniques of focussed attention, one can test the proposition that memories are stored in the brain by trying to access obscure memories which you would not be able to access in your waking state, including, ultimately, memories from before one's present birth, i.e., of a past life, which can then be checked for veridicality. Alan is setting up a centre where contemplatives will train so that they can be scientifically tested in this way.
The last part of the lecture consists in a discussion in the context of modern physics of the (lack of) objectivity of the world beyond personal consciousness; of its dependence on subjectivity.
My (Laird's) comments:
I wonder whether Alan recognises dreams which access a shared rather than a purely personal reality, such as shared dreams, and the type of immersions which Mediochre has described himself having to us. I also wonder what he would make of Mediochre's experiences of that which he refers to as The Kruger Effect, in which it is possible to be hurt (in waking reality) in a dream.
I also wonder what his knowledge is of past life regression, because it seems that his centre is set up to study essentially the same phenomenon but using personal contemplative techniques rather than hypnotic techniques.
https://media.sbinstitute.com/_dl/lectur...905-EN.mp3
Here are some summary notes of the lecture:
Three state-checks for testing whether you're dreaming:
1. Read something, then remove it from your field of vision, bring it back, and read it again. In a dream, it will be different from one reading to the next.
2. Pull on your nose: in a dream it won't have any cartilage and will extend like Pinocchio's.
3. Find a flat platform and jump up. In a dream, you are likely to gently float down, or simply float.
There are also dream signs: common themes personal to each of us that indicate when we are dreaming. e.g., Showing up to a lecture and being totally unprepared. Being in an airport and finding you've left your passport at home, or can't find your luggage, and time is running out.
Three entry points to lucid dreaming:
1. Dream-induced: you recognise something within a dream as bizarre or improbable, and this triggers you to recognise that you are dreaming.
2. Waking-induced: you recognise that you're waking up and about to crest into the waking process, and then go back into the dream and retain continuity.
3. Mnemonic-induced: setting an advance intention to state-check in a dream, and then carrying out that state check in the dream and determining that it is in fact a dream.
Two methods to stay in a lucid dream:
1. Spin around.
2. Rub your bottom (body? I might have misheard this).
Two methods for walking through walls in a lucid dream if you keep on getting stuck in the middle of the wall:
1. Close your eyes just before reaching the wall.
2. Walk into the wall backwards.
Lucid dreams are solely products of our minds, and we can learn to control them; to emanate and transform, including our own forms, e.g., to transform ourselves into a butterfly; to emanate Einstein so that we can have a conversation with him, though he will not be able to tell us anything that we don't already know, since he is purely an emanation of our own minds.
Lucid dreams, as purely products of our own minds, cannot possibly harm us.
Human consciousness is conditioned by and dependent on the human brain. The Buddhist hypothesis is that underlying human consciousness is a "stem" consciousness akin to the stem cells of biology: it can be configured into any specific type of consciousness as conditioned by material reality, such as by a human brain or by a reptile brain.
In a lucid dream, if you stop acting and be still, you stop dreaming and enter a state of dreamless sleep. In this state, which can be trained for using contemplative and meditative techniques of focussed attention, one can test the proposition that memories are stored in the brain by trying to access obscure memories which you would not be able to access in your waking state, including, ultimately, memories from before one's present birth, i.e., of a past life, which can then be checked for veridicality. Alan is setting up a centre where contemplatives will train so that they can be scientifically tested in this way.
The last part of the lecture consists in a discussion in the context of modern physics of the (lack of) objectivity of the world beyond personal consciousness; of its dependence on subjectivity.
My (Laird's) comments:
I wonder whether Alan recognises dreams which access a shared rather than a purely personal reality, such as shared dreams, and the type of immersions which Mediochre has described himself having to us. I also wonder what he would make of Mediochre's experiences of that which he refers to as The Kruger Effect, in which it is possible to be hurt (in waking reality) in a dream.
I also wonder what his knowledge is of past life regression, because it seems that his centre is set up to study essentially the same phenomenon but using personal contemplative techniques rather than hypnotic techniques.
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