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Chapter 6
Unusual Dream Experiences
Check your answers to Section I on your
questionnaire. This section was left open ended so as not to limit the survey
dreamers’ responses. Much of the material the survey dreamers sent me has been
discussed in Part Two of this book, especially in Chapter 19, Time Travel and Chapter 20,
Housekeeping or Voyaging the Astral Plane? Meanwhile, compare your answers with Ms Survey
Dreamer:
Ms Survey Dreamer has psychic dreams (71.9%), but rarely (31.9%),
and experiences deja vu (88.1%) frequently (40.6%). She has lucid dreams (58.8%)
frequently (25.6%). She has neither had an out-of-the-body experience in waking
life (65.6%), nor dreamed she has been out of her body (50.6%).
‘Psychic’ Dreams and deja vu
‘Have you ever had a psychic, ESP or
prediction dream which came true?’ I did not define the word ‘psychic’ in
the questionnaire and no-one asked for clarification, yet almost three-quarters of the
people surveyed answered ‘yes’ to this question. According to The Concise
Oxford Dictionary, ‘psychic’ means ‘inexplicable by natural laws’
and a ‘dream’ is a ‘series of pictures or events in the mind of a
sleeping person’ or ‘a state of mind without proper perception of reality’
(my emphasis). Perhaps it’s time we changed our perception of the natural laws to fit
what is being experienced by a large proportion of dreamers.
As a scientist I might have been extremely
sceptical about the first few completed survey questionnaires I received. It would have
been harder to hang onto my scepticism after reading thirty or forty more questionnaires.
The scientist in me would have had to concede and publish the information. As a
precognitive dreamer myself, I was excited to see that others had similar experiences, and
to realise just how widespread these ‘psychic’ dream phenomena are.
People on the survey who scored high in dream detail also experienced
more frequent deja vu and more frequent psychic dreams.
Sometimes my dreams are prophetic but only
concerning myself – to the point where I have been able to alter deja vu
situations.
(Tom, archivist)
I believe that we relive a huge proportion of our
dreams although we are often oblivious to the fact. Survey dreamers who claimed no
experience of psychic dreaming scored low on deja vu experience. For the rest, we shake
our heads, momentarily overcome with that odd sensation of deja vu, unaware of the
original dream. Once we learn to become more adept at recalling detail from our dreams, we
can use this knowledge to our advantage.
When I was in my early teens, my father had a
very serious drinking problem. I dreamed my mother came to me with dad’s rifle and
asked me to hide it in the bottom drawer of my chest of drawers, and not to say anything
if dad should ask. That night, in the dream, as I lay in bed, Dad was even more cruel and
irrational than usual. I knew he was hurting Mum badly. I took the rifle and told my
father to stop it. He turned and laughed in my face and I shot him dead.
I woke from this dream with a strange, nervous
feeling. It turned out to be a predictive dream. Mum came to me and asked me to hide the
rifle exactly as she had in the dream. As with the dream, my father was horribly violent.
I was very scared. I thought of the consequences of killing my father. I would have loved
him to die, but I knew there would be court and more problems for my mother. I chose to
stay on in bed. I remember holding the sides of the bed so hard it shook as I listened to
my parents arguing.
(Hannah, home maker)
This kind of predictive dream was widespread
throughout the dream survey, being a chance to preview a situation, exactly as it would
later unfold, and to experience the consequences of possible outcomes beforehand.
(Since 1993, when the original version of Sleep
On It and change your life was written, I have spent three years researching
precognition. That story, and the results became The Shape of Things to Come
which was published by Random House Australia in 1998.)
Dream sharing was mentioned by many people, and
this is a phenomenon I have personally experienced too. Robyn’s example illustrates:
In my dream, I walked slowly along the rocky
shore of North Coogee Beach, holding the hand of my five year old son. A large wave comes
in and separates me from my three year old son who is tagging along behind us. I am not
very worried though. I have a happy feeling that he is okay.
In the morning my younger sister told me her
dream. She was walking along Coogee Beach holding her three year old nephew’s hand.
Her five year old nephew is running up ahead. A large wave separates her from him. She
does not panic as she has the feeling that I am up ahead with him.
We frequently shared dreams during the time we
lived together, when I was 25 and she was 18. We often wrote our dreams down, then
exchanged them so the accounts were accurate.
(Robyn, sculptor)
Lucid Dreams
Sometimes the dream is boring me, so I liven it
up a bit.
(Seeker, astrologer)
This is known as lucid dreaming. You are dreaming
and you suddenly realise you are dreaming. You become fully conscious while still
dreaming. At that point you may choose to create anything in your dream, or go anywhere
you wish. Anything, absolutely anything, is possible once you are aware of your dream
state.
Lucid dreaming can be used mildly to get out of a
tricky situation without waking up.
Alternatively this realisation of dreaming may be
just enough to relax and feel safe enough in the dream to stand back and watch the action
without fear of danger. In many of my own lucid dreams I choose to observe myself and the
dream from my conscious state. I’ll often interpret a dream while its happening, with
my conscious mind making comments such as ‘That’s a good symbol’ or ‘I
must remember that part in the morning’, or ‘This is a long dream, I wonder if
I’ll manage to get to the end before my alarm goes off?’
Lucid dreams can be used to role play situations
you are confronting in waking life, or to bring in a specialist, Einstein, for example,
and ask him a few questions about quantum physics, or to travel to the other side of the
universe and back. Since the senses are always highly accentuated and potential is
unlimited, lucid dreams are totally exhilarating, yet as real as any waking life
experience.
Lucid dreaming is what got me started. It’s
absolutely out of this world. When it first happened to me I really wondered what on earth
was going on inside my mind. The only way I can describe it is to say if this room was in
pitch darkness, that would be your normal dream. In a lucid dream you see a door in a wall
and you walk through it into brilliant sunshine and you get all five senses highly
accentuated. If I could live there permanently, I would, because it’s less dangerous,
you’re in charge, you don’t interfere with anyone else’s life and you can
have an absolute ball.
(Alex, clerk)
So how do you get into a lucid dream? The first
step is to program yourself to look for signs of dreaming. Stephen LaBerge and Howard
Rheingold’s excellent book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming suggests many
methods. A popular one is based on the assumption that we tend to dream about what we have
been preoccupied with during the day. The idea is to write on the back of a business card
‘Am I dreaming?’ and to take this card out of your pocket every half hour or so
during the day to read it. You then seriously contemplate the question. You look around
you to check whether anything in your environment looks unusual or bizarre. You may try to
push off on your toes and fly. The chances are that this mild obsession will creep into
your dream, and you will apply the tests and realise that you are dreaming. At this
point, the dream is yours to control. Another good method is to wear a digital watch and
get into the habit of checking it frequently. The assumption here is that it is difficult
to dream consecutive numbers (a task too rational for the dreaming part of the brain).
Look at the watch once, then look at it a few seconds later. If you see a totally
different time, guess what – you’re dreaming!
Alex tried this in a dream but:
The card was blank and I wasn’t wearing a
watch! I ran cautiously into a wall, jumped at it, hit the wall and rebounded. So then I
walked up and gently pushed it, and that’s how I always do it now.
(Alex, clerk)
I once dreamed that I was in a house opening a
door to go into the garden. I opened the door, but it led to another door, which led to
another door. On and on doors led to endless doors with no garden in sight. At this point
I started to become lucid and also knew I needed to wake up soon. I tried three more
doors, then decided to close my eyes in the dream and think myself into the garden. I
needed that sense of achievement before waking up! Instantly I was transported into a
beautiful garden and, shortly afterwards, woke up.
This may sound a bit way out, but having access
to all my senses in a lucid dream, I want to come back with something material. I always
want to get to bed quickly to get on with it. Daytime is boring compared to this! I
don’t think you can separate daytime life from dreams. Dreams are an extension of
daytime life. They help you to grow.
(Andrew, construction manager)
It seems you can use lucid dreaming to learn more
about yourself, to add to your personal development, to explore the frontiers of the mind,
to escape from a bad dream, to maintain consciousness so that you can study the natural
course of your dreams with better recall, to escape into virtual reality or to push into
the reality of other dimensions. The choice is yours.
But perhaps the best use of lucid dreaming is as
a tool to investigate unusual dream phenomena. Why not open the alertness channels, take
control and tune into what really is out there in your dreaming life?
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