The Lucid Dreamer

It’s possible to some degree to tell how awake someone is based on what they say. Based on all the videos I’ve watched of Sadhguru, I gotta say I’m not really that impressed either. He’s a smart guy and all, but I definitely don’t think he has as deep of a grasp on the metaphysical nature of reality as Leo does. It doesn’t seem like he’s even as awake as Alan Watts. Then again, he doesn’t tend to get too metaphysical with his general audience. Maybe he could surprise me. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Caring about how awake Leo thinks someone is is just a distraction from doing the work. Just do the work if you want to see for yourself how awake it’s possible to become.

Expand the environment you mean? I’m sorry for the delay Galyna, My whole life has been a spiritual quest, but of course what you mean is when did I realize I was on the spiritual path. Well, like most US Americans, I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household where science and philosophy were demonized, and I was sheltered from any contradictory information. I eventually broke free from that dogma at the age of about 23 when I started to gain a deep fascination for science. I read dozens of science books and watched every science documentary I could find, which eventually led me to painfully give up my Christian beliefs. From there I was led into the religion of atheism and the “skeptic” community where I started listening to the likes of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and of course: Sam Harris. For the next couple of years I was completely immersed in the topic of atheism vs religion and it led me to study the shit out of western philosophy. I read entire philosophy text books and listened to thousands of hours of lecture and debate. Eventually, Sam Harris finally managed to convince me to start a formal meditation practice. I really respected him, so I figured he must be on to something about it’s utility. I listened to his 26 minute guided meditation on his podcast, where he proceeded to blow my fucking mind. He got me to see that I had no real free will or agency underneath the phenomenal changes within my consciousness. He got me to realize that what I was, was not my ideas about myself, but that I was merely the thing that was observing my life play out. He got me to realize that I was Consciousness itself. This got me to start thinking about what consciousness was and how it could exist at all. So I started to become fascinated with consciousness at this point. Eventually I met someone who was able to get a hold of cannabis(dabs in this case). I finally decided to try cannabis at age 25. And when I did, my brain became supercharged into a philosophizing machine. My new insights about consciousness and the nature of the self mixed with my previous years of rigorous philosophical study made my mind go wild with existential insights while under the influence of this drug. This was when I started to realize that reality was something far more profound than I had ever previously thought, or had heard anyone else talk about. By this time, my mind was very philosophically charged, and philosophy was really all I thought about, so when I got Into these states induced by cannabis, I was able to deduce on my own that all of reality was made out of one substance in an infinite number of variations, that I was the universe conscious of itself(I called it ‘the universe’ at this point because I had a bias towards to term ‘God’), that reality must be absolutely infinite, and that I, as Consciousness, was going to live the life of every conscious creature that has existed does exist and will ever exist. I also had very deep insights about the relative nature of reality and that there could be no such thing as objective absolute measurement of anything. These, what I consider to be my first real mystical experiences, marked the beginning of my spiritual path 5 years ago. At this point, I had no idea that these truths had been known by humanity for well over 5000 years. I very naively thought I was on the edge of philosophy, and that no one had ever thought of these things before. Of course at this point I saw these insights as mere theories because I was so indoctrinated into believing that the scientific method as we know it today had a monopoly on truth. But at the same time I felt just about 100% certain that I was right, but I didn’t understand how I could know it so clearly without it being verified by science. I even got into really heated arguments with my best friend about these ideas(who was and still is a diehard atheist materialist) He would straight up yell at me “YOU CAN’T KNOW THAT” and I honestly didn’t know how to explain to him how I felt so certain about it. This put a lot of pressure on our friendship. Eventually I stumbled onto the likes of Alan Watts. I would listen to his lectures and hear him repeat back to me the very insights I had gained about the nature of reality, (albeit in a much more eloquent manner) and it absolutely blew my mind. I thought I was the only one! I felt so vindicated and validated. I was both ecstatic that I wasn’t alone and disappointed that I wasn’t the first to have these insights. This began my study into true spirituality, where I started to listen to many different spiritual teachers, opening up that string of recommended videos on YouTube that eventually led me to finding Leo. The rest is history. Since then I’ve had well over 100 psychedelic trips and several deep awakenings, which eventually led me to renounce my Atheist title. Sorry for the novel. When asked questions like that, I tend to want to go way in depth. That’s incredible. It’s insane how the mind can generate such complex and beautiful environments like that, it never ceases to blow my mind. Yes, tell me about as many dreams as you wish. And you can tell me how you began your spiritual quest as well if you like.

This personally has never happened to me, so I am no authority on the issue. The closest to that I’ve experienced is waking up from a dream and then going back to sleep and starting the dream where I had left off.

@Javfly33 It sounds like you yourself had an awakening in your dream, so it looks like it’s possible. Leo talks about an intense awakening experience that he had in a dream a few months ago. I think it’s on the blog. Well the trick is to start out the dream in control. Read my above comment to learn how to do that. I don’t really have any technique to gain control when you are inside a dream that you don’t already have control of. Now that you pose the question, I will be sure to experiment in the future.

The best method that I’ve found that works for me is what’s called the “wake back to sleep” method. The idea is to force yourself to wake up after around 6 or so hours of sleep, and stay awake for 30 minutes to an hour or just until you’re basically woken up. After you feel like you almost don’t want to sleep anymore, force yourself to go back to sleep. During the process of trying to get back to sleep, try to stay mindful of your visual field until you start to drift off. You should start to see images appear in your visual field as you enter into a hypnagogic state, and if all goes to plan, your mind should generate a physical environment right before your eyes and you should start to feel yourself being able to consciously control your body in the dream. The hard part after that is to not get too excited as to wake yourself up. Which can be very difficult, because the feeling of knowing that you are dreaming can feel so intriguing that it will overstimulate you. If you really want to get into lucid dreaming, something you have to start doing is keeping a dream journal. This is not optional. Whenever you wake up from a dream, lucid or not, right down what you can remember of the dream right away. This will exercise your minds ability to recall your dreams. I would also consider certain supplements. Melatonin, Huperzine-A, and Calea Zacatechichi extract are what I’ve found to be the most effective. Take Huperzine-A before you go to sleep at night, and then take the Melatonin and Calea Zacatechichi after you wake up after 6 hours and are getting ready to go back to sleep to attempt a Lucid dream. You can take the Calea Zacatechichi immediately after waking but I would say to take the melatonin 30 minutes before trying to go back to sleep. You need to give yourself time to wake up before taking the melatonin and then you need to give the melatonin time to kick in before attempting to go back to sleep. Another thing you need to start doing, (and I’m assuming or hoping that you already do this since you are on this forum,) is start practicing formal mindfulness meditation, and practicing simple mindfulness throughout the day. Get into the habit of being mindful throughout the day of the present moment and whatever you are sensing in your visual field. If you get into this habit in your waking life, this habit will carry over into your dreams, making you far more likely to go lucid while dreaming.

@IJB063 Chya brah. Feel free to have all the dream sex with Margot Robbie that you want during the process.

@IJB063 Broseph You would be satisfied till you get horny again.

Nah my guy. Sexual desire is momentary and can never be fully satisfied. Awakening is forever.

Only if you have no existential curiosity and are only concerned with satisfying your carnal animalistic needs. Sex is great and all, but my intellectual needs tend to supersede my carnal needs inside these spaces.

Yeah it’s funny how just a little bit of mindfulness of the present moment and attentiveness to your physical surroundings can trigger a lucid dream that quickly. I started having lucid dreams almost immediately after starting to practice mindfulness meditation 5 years ago. Eventually I wanted to kick it up a notch and increase the frequency and vividness of my dreams, so I started keeping a dream journal(to increase dream recall) and started taking supplements. I’ve tried many, but the ones that I’ve found that seem to be the most effective for me are Melatonin, Huperzine-A and Calea Zatatechichi. These supplements coupled with the “wake back to bed” method just about guarantee that I’ll achieve lucidity to some degree or another. Haha, I love how you just assume that I’ve done that. Us men are pretty predictable in that way I suppose. It’s how we’re wired, whattaya gonna do? You might be surprised to hear that sexual activity in my lucid dreams is quite rare, and that I tend to be far more interested in doing experiments with the environment and people within the dream. Whenever I step into a lucid dream, I immediately think to stop and look around very mindfully. I focus intently on my visual experience to see just how real it seems. I will pay attention to very subtle things, that most people don’t think about, like the shifting and rotation of the three-dimensional objects as I move around the environment. Somehow it fascinates me that my mind is able to simulate the 3D rotation of objects. I will also go around touching things to see how accurately my mind can simulate the sense of touch of certain textured surfaces. If I find food or drink, I will consume it to see how well my mind simulates taste and the texture of the food or liquid. I will test the consistency and static-ness of the environment by looking at a certain object, looking away from it, and then looking back at it several times to see if the object stays static. One of my favorite things to do is to go look into the mirror, if I can find a restroom or something. That’s when things usually get very trippy. My mind usually does a very good job of simulating my facial features, but sometimes some very weird things can happen. One time I looked in the mirror and my entire face was completely white, including my hair and my eyeballs, and then it morphed into an aged version of my face where I looked like I was 80 years old. Other times, my facial features will just morph like my eyes will get really big or my mouth will get really small or whatever. Other very disturbing things have happened when I looked in the mirror that I dare not even describe. If I can find a person in the dream, I will ask them questions. One time, I went into a room where I found an older gentleman sitting in a chair just chilling. I went up to him and I said, “Hey so I’m dreaming right now, and we’re inside my dream.” He nodded his head as if to say “Yeah, duh.” I then asked, “Are you dreaming to? Like do you have a body outside of this dream?” He shook his head No, and so I said “Oh okay, that’s very interesting, so how does that work? Do you just exist and live inside my mind? Do you have a life here?” He proceeded to explain that he lived inside the matrix of my mind and that everyone, including myself, lives inside a dream or some layer of the infinite matrix. I was so shocked by this answer that I immediately woke up from overstimulation. If I’m not doing little experiments like that, I will be just doing the typical things, like running around super fast, jumping really high, sometimes flying, ya know... just having fun. And by god, is it fun.

Of course! Have you tried purposefully inducing lucid dreams as a hobby, or have they just happened spontaneously so far? That’s interesting. I don’t find them to be that predictable at all. In fact, one of the reasons lucid dreams fascinate me so much is because even though I am conscious that I am dreaming, unpredictable things will happen, and it feels like I am traversing an environment that was preexisting and interacting with completely unique people whom I’m pretty positive I’ve never seen in the waking world before. And when I talk to these people, they will say things to me that I feel I would never think on my own. Though some lucid dreams are very fluid and unstable, most of mine are very static and as solid and consistent as the waking world. My mind will simulate an environment that I’ve never seen before. It’s just incredible. It seems to show that the human mind is far more powerful than we typically think.

Indeed I am. At least I do my best to stay Lucid within this dream. That’s why I picked the name. The name is mainly referring to being lucid in this waking dream, not the sleeping dreams. Though I do that too.

@Mongu9719 It’s interesting because when you hear Adam talk on his channel, he makes himself sound as if he still thinks pretty materialistically but then I see his comments on Leo’s videos all the time which makes me think he knows more than he’s letting on to his general audience. He probably feels like he can’t tell his audience what he actually knows about reality for fear of alienating them.

@tedens Yes, a dream in which you are aware that you are dreaming. Basically like enlightenment of the dream world. But we’ll leave that for another thread. Either @Galyna or I will start a Lucid dreaming thread here soon, if there isn’t already a Lucid Dreaming Mega Thread somewhere.

@Galyna Yeah, you right tho.

Ever since I started meditating formally and practicing mindfulness throughout the day, I’ve started Lucid dreaming almost every other night. I take Melatonin and Huperzine-A as well to help induce lucid dreams more often. Sort of a hobby of mine. When you get into the habit of becoming mindful of the present moment throughout the day, that habit will carry over into your dreams, making it way more likely for you to go lucid.

Yeah, maybe some time in the future Leo could just make a quick like 30-40 minute video just clearing up the misconception. It seems like there’s a quite a few people who can’t seem to see the difference, though I’m sure they are just a vocal minority.

@Galyna I’m not perfect by any means. Intellectually speaking, I understand other people are a fiction my mind is manifesting. But in the heat of the moment, it’s hard to be fully conscious of that, especially when you have to deal with the consequences of other people’s opinions and actions towards you. As far as stomaching the truth of it, I somehow managed to come to terms with it when I was in stage Orange as a materialist atheist. Not completely, but I somehow was able to put the pieces together that other people are really just a force of nature that I have to deal with like anything else. There is no real agency beneath their actions or thoughts, and if I were them(which I am, but I didn’t realize that at the time) I would be doing exactly what they are doing. The same way that I myself(as the ego, Chase)have no real agency or free will, but I am just Consciousness merely watching Chase do what Chase does. As far as the existential loneliness that can come along with this realization... I never really struggled with it that much, because I realized very young(and I mean like at age 10 or so) that whether or not other people are real, I am always alone in my own head, and that it’s not possible to fully connect with another. So I seemed to have come to terms with that notion very early in life. Not going to say it did not make me depressed for a time. I suppose the way in which this realization liberates one from suffering, is it rids you of your expectations of other people and it makes you realize that other people can’t help but do what they do, so what is the point in getting upset? Not only that, but you understand that if you get upset with another person, you’re only getting upset with yourself. You understand that you literally are that other person, so you can’t help but be understanding and compassionate towards them. It’s the very thing that allows you to truly Love. Perfect selflessness through perfect selfishness, haha. Funny how it goes full circle like that. Also, I somehow find peace in the idea of being completely alone. I don’t even know if I can tell you why. I personally just love being alone, and I spend most of my time outside of work alone in nature meditating and contemplating these things. Which is what I’m doing right now. It’s like I’m free to just bask in the beauty and splendor of God’s/My creation without being bogged down by the ignorance and existential apathy of others. To me it feels like hanging out with God, in a sense. How do you feel about it? Is it a depressing notion to you?

@Galyna You’re very welcome. Thank you for having an open mind and ears to hear. Er... or eyes to read, whatever, haha. I wish I could tell you that you would most likely have a direct experience of The Absolute with just months of meditation and self-inquiry, or some other non-chemical method. Unfortunately, this has not worked for myself or really anyone I know of. I’ve had plenty of “Aha!” Moments or leaps in consciousness when thinking about it conceptually, but I could never induce a direct experience of it even with over 5000 hours of meditation. This is not to say that meditation is useless. It’s great training to keep your mind quiet and keep your focus on the present moment, which will naturally keep you calm and it will make you far more likely to have a breakthrough during a trip. I still meditate every day myself, but just not with the intention of having an awakening experience. If it happens, then cool, but I just do it as an exercise in quieting my mind and being in the present moment, which is very important for this work either way. Best of luck on your journey.

The problem is that you still think there is such a thing as You. When you can look past the illusion of the self, you will understand. You have no identity, therefore you are all identities.

@Galyna You are the Now is what I’m trying to say. When you get down to the very bottom of what is it that you actually are, what you’ll find is that what you are, is not any of the concepts you attach to yourself, but that all you are is raw consciousness itself. Your consciousness and my consciousness is not similar, but PERFECTLY identical. Not talking about the contents of consciousness, but the consciousness itself, being the feeling of felt experience; the very sense of being. That is absolutely perfectly one hundred percent identical across all things. And despite all the perceived differences within our consciousness, the one thing that it all has in common is that it is all happening right now. Your now and my now are the exact same now.

@Galyna Contemplate what Now means. Is there ever a time where it was not Now? Even for people who lived 2000 years ago (relative to our lives), it is still Now.

@Galyna This is because God is Absolute Infinity and Infinity requires that God experience life from all perspectives, including the perspectives of whatever humans or creatures you imagine. Of course ultimately, you as God can only and are only interacting with yourself when you are interacting with “others”. But the perspective of the “other” exists, only because Infinity requires that all perspectives and imaginings be played out. They are none other than you. But you as God has/will/are experiencing all other perspectives at once.

That’s what did it for me, haha. The problem is that the finite mind cannot grapple with paradox, so you need to transcend the mind to understand. But even saying that you’ll “understand” it is not even accurate. More accurate to say you must become the paradox.

@Galyna This phenomenon of “zooming in” as you put it is what we call the ego. Your body is a conceptual construction of the ego that makes you feel limited to one perspective.