Ebook: The lucid dreamer: a waking guide for the traveler between worlds

An unorthodox exploration of the phenomenon of lucid dreaming surveys the nature of the dream world over the last five thousand years, recent research, detailed techniques and exercises from each tradition, and analysis of the nature of dreaming versus waking.

From the Dust Jacket: The Lucid Dreamer is a waking guide to the fantastic world of conscious dreaming. In a lucid dream, the sleeper awakens within the dream and gains total control of the direction of the dream events. These experiences are characterized by such vivid brilliance and dazzling authenticity that the reality of our normal waking world is seriously called into question. Dreams of the shamanic "traveler between realms," the therapeutic realms of healing, the mystical dreams of awakening, and the final, transcending dreams of death are all examined in detail. Although awareness of this rare form of dreaming has only recently reached a popular Western audience, it has long been recognized in the East by yogis and mystics as a signpost on the way to spiritual realization. To the sages, the essential purpose of lucid dreamwork is ultimately to wake up, not just within a dream but in our waking life too. It now appears that Western scientists, in the fundamental disciplines of quantum physics and neurophysiology, are beginning to suspect what the mystics have been saying for thousands of years-that our waking world is like a hologram. It is an illusion. But the ancient traditions also claim that we are capable of creating our dream scenarios, not only in lucid states but in our waking realities as well. Included are nearly 200 full-color and black-and-white intriguing and diverse illustrations of little-known dream masks and Zen paintings, Aboriginal Australian art, North American paintings, and works by modern native primitives, Surrealists, and schizophrenics. The Lucid Dreamer offers the reader a fascinating psychological, scientific, and mystical account of a phenomenon that had been part of the secret doctrines of both sage and sorcerer for thousands of years. At the same time, through many practical and varied exercises presented throughout the text, the reader is given the means of directly experiencing dream states that are literally "out of this world."