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of lucid dreaming isn t quite as important as the fact that it does exist. Actually, it has existed for quite
some time possibly for as long as the process of dreaming itself has existed. Our focus is upon learning
how to lucid dream and maximizing progress along the way, but a little background information may
serve to enhance the overall validity of the subject.
The existence of lucid dreams has been noted many times in past literature, but the term "lucid dream"
was coined at the turn of the century by Frederik VanEeden, a Dutch psychiatrist. He used the term to
describe dreams he had in which he was fully conscious and fully aware that he was dreaming while he
was dreaming. He presented a paper to the Society for Psychical Research that contained several hundred
lucid dreams he had compiled over a series of years. Today, there are many wonderful lucid dream
enthusiasts who are generously contributing to the field. Thanks to the works of people like Celia Green,
Patricia Garfield, Ann Faraday, Gail Gackenbach, Robert Moss, Alan Worsley, and Stephen LaBerge,
lucid dreaming is becoming more widely understood, and more importantly, it is becoming more widely
practiced.
Although its history can be traced through various sources, lucid dreaming has only recently been
recognized officially by our scientific community. Due mostly to the scientific scrutiny of laboratory
studies being conducted by various dream researchers, lucid dreaming is being evaluated in a different
light. Believe it or not, before the research that proved the existence of lucid dreams, there were many
scientists who scoffed at the idea that it was even possible to be fully conscious while dreaming. A
Stanford dream researcher, Stephen LaBerge, conducted experiments in which the lucid dreamer would
signal by means of making eye movements when he or she became lucid in a dream. Coincidentally,
Alan Worsley, a British dream researcher, was testing this same method of having dreamers use eye
signals to indicate if they were lucid. They separately confirmed that this was indeed possible. Since
lucid dreaming has been proven to exist from a scientific standpoint, hopefully it will begin to gather
momentum now that it falls within the tightly grasped belief systems of our scientific community. More
research and more studies will only add more needed knowledge to the growing field.
Stephen LaBerge has been conducting extensive scientific research into lucid dreaming and has
co-founded The Lucidity Institute, a foundation dedicated to the advancement of lucid dreaming. The
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The Lucid Dreamer s Manual: From the Basics to Beyond
Lucidity Institute is a very valuable source of information. They have a wonderful website with an
archive of insightful articles. They also offer a catalog with various products including the craving of all
lucid dreamers, the NovaDreamer. The NovaDreamer is a sleep mask that detects your eye movement
while you sleep. It detects when you are in REM and flashes light cues in order to trigger a lucid dream.
The NovaDreamer will be covered more thoroughly in the section dealing with tools and tactics for
strengthening and aiding our awareness.
The Lucidity Institute also publishes a quarterly newsletter, the NightLight. I highly recommend
subscribing to their newsletter and contributing to their cause. Aside from the luminous articles, each
newsletter contains an experiment for you to attempt in your dreams. It s so easy you can do it in your
sleep. Seriously though, the experiments pertain to various lucid dream-related ideas such as testing
methods for prolonging lucidity or rating your level of pain in a lucid dream. After you attempt the
experiment, you send your results back to The Lucidity Institute, and they tabulate the results and report
any findings in the next newsletter.
So now that lucid dreaming is being evaluated and tested under a scientist s apparatus, it is now slowly
but surely gaining followers. Earlier on, I mentioned many of the notable figures in the field, but there
are far too many reputable dream researchers to mention them all. There are also many excellent writers
who have written books on the subject. We ll talk about the importance of reading about the subject and
which books are the best available in a later section, but for now we re ready to move on to the good
stuff. Having covered all the necessary background concepts, we are ready to begin learning the basics.
PART II The BASICS: Beginning Methods
VII. PREPARATION AND BUILDING BASIC SKILLS
So now we ve come to the payoff. In order to make this material more user-friendly, the
information has been divided into four categories. By getting an overview at a glance, it may
be easier for you to thoroughly learn, absorb and internalize all the information. Hopefully,
it will help tighten all the concepts into one working whole.
The Process
Section One: The Six Basic Steps
Section Two: Other methods
Section Three: General tips
Section Four: Tools and Tactics
All these sections have one objective: teaching you how to become lucid in your dreams.
After you ve learned the process, methods, tips, tools, and tactics, we ll cover the more
advanced techniques that you will need to know once you become lucid.
The Process:
There are many techniques and methods that you can use for inducing lucid dreams, but there are
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The Lucid Dreamer s Manual: From the Basics to Beyond
basically two different ways of becoming lucid. You can either have dream-induced or wake-induced
lucid dreams. Stephen LaBerge coined the term D.I.L.D. (Dream Induced Lucid Dream) for dreams in
which you become lucid while within a dream. By training your awareness, you will somehow realize
that you are dreaming while you are dreaming. This is by far the most common way of having a lucid
dream, but it is also possible to directly enter a lucid dream from a waking state. These Wake Induced
Lucid Dreams, or W.I.L.D.s, are far more rare, but as LaBerge so aptly labeled them, they are quite an
experience. While covering the basics we will be dealing primarily with dream induced lucid dreams.
When we move beyond the basics, we will be dealing with the more advanced techniques that will
include inducing W.I.L.D.s.
There are many methods to induce lucid dreams, but there is an underlying process behind most if not all
of them. I ve broken this underlying process down into six basic steps that will serve as our beginning
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