DreamSpeak
Interview Robert Waggoner has been lucid dreaming for the past 25 years. Besides assisting with the LDE, he speaks at conferences and occasionally writes on lucid dreaming. He's a strong supporter of the Association for the Study of Dreams, and encourages lucid dreamers to check them out at www.asdreams.org. When not dreaming, he lives in Ames, IA with his wife, Wendy, and two cats.
<Robert> I began lucid dreaming in the spring of 1975 after reading Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda. It seemed quite simple to use the method taught in the book to "set up dreaming". Carlos was told by his teacher don Juan that, "Tonight in your dreams you must look at your hands." He clarified it a bit and said, "But pick one thing in advance and find it in your dreams. I said your hands because they will always be there." Don Juan advised Carlos that when he saw his hands in his dreams then he would naturally realize he was dreaming. I interpreted all of this to mean that before going to sleep I should look at my hands and suggest to myself to see them in the dream state. In the dream, seeing one's hands would then be the cue to become conscious or lucid within the dream - just like some conditioned response, in which a stimulus elicits a certain response. <Lucy> How did that technique turn out? <Robert> Within a few days of trying this practice each night, I had my first actively sought lucid dream at age 17. It was incredible! <Lucy> What was your first lucid dream like? <Robert> The first lucid dream began simply enough. In it, I was walking in the hallways of my High School, at the junction of B and C halls. As I prepared to push the door open, I suddenly felt like the world had become brighter somehow. Suddenly my hands flew up in front of my face which made me realize, "This is a dream! This is a dream!" I walked a few feet towards the Administration Building with a great feeling of euphoria and energy, welling up inside. I decided to look back down at my hands and this time I became totally absorbed in them. I saw each fingerprint, each line, as if it were a giant flesh-toned canyon that I hovered above and within. I felt like the world was now my palmprint, and that I could spend eternity moving about its vast canyons and gullies and whorls. I no longer saw a hand, I saw cream colored canyon-like walls of varying undulations surround me, through which my perception seemed to float. I was ecstatic and joyous, filled with awe. I wondered how this could be. Then, my vision popped back to normal proportions and I saw again that I was standing in front of the Administration Building with my hands outstretched. I thought about what to do, and felt this incredible urge to fly, to fly! I became airborne heading straight up for the sunny sky. At this point the overwhelming feelings of elation had reached their maximum pitch and the lucid dream ended and I awoke, astounded with my heart pounding. <Lucy> What did you think about that? <Robert> I had never felt such intense feelings of elation, energy and utter freedom. I was amazed to realize that my hands literally flew up to my face as if propelled by some magical force in the dream state. Still it seemed so paradoxical - to become conscious when dreaming - to become conscious in the unconscious!? What a concept! So each night before I went to sleep, I would look at my hands and remind myself that I wanted to see my hands in my dreams. I found it an extremely easy technique to follow. At the time (1975) it was the only technique that I was aware of. I think it was 1980 when I learned of LaBerge's MILD technique, and I had excellent success with it. <Lucy> Why do you think the Castaneda technique is not more popular? <Robert> Well, there are two reasons. First, some people think it is extraordinarily boring. That's true of course, but I think that is one reason the technique works -- my belief is that when your "ego" gets bored and sleepy as you look at your hands before going to sleep, the lack of ego focus allows the intent of lucidity to reach your inner self. It's like the ego is a sentry at the gates to the unconscious, and only when it is bored or sleepy, can the idea of one's intent to lucid dream move over to the inner self. The other reason for the lack of popularity is probably the concerns about Castaneda's veracity. The books have some incredible stories that defy rational explanations and some have suggested that Castaneda took eastern techniques and wove them into a shamanic fictional story. I don't know what the truth is - I just liked the practical technique. <Lucy> Do you still use the Castaneda technique to achieve lucidity? <Robert> No. Nowadays, I am much more likely to become lucid by simply noticing something odd in the dream - fish swimming in the air, my deceased father talking to me, a shimmery surface, etc. And on those nights when I'm consciously trying to have a lucid dream, I am much more likely to use LaBerge's MILD technique, the CRAM technique (my self-created Constant Repetition - Affirming Message in which I clear my mind and constantly repeat my intention to become lucid), or wake up for 10 minutes in the early morning hours and concentrate on lucid dreaming before going back to sleep. <Lucy> How did your lucid dreaming progress? <Robert> Like most people, I assume, I initially was caught up in the basics of prolonging the lucid dream, exploring the lucid environment and its verisimilitude to the waking state, flying and trying to interact with characters in the dream. Though on another level, one could say that I was actually learning to use my "will" and "intent" and "expectation" in a psychological environment. One of my fortunate encounters was getting an invitation to join Linda Magallon's "Lucidity Project" in which lucid dreamers were given a monthly goal or challenge to achieve in their lucid dreaming. For me, having a challenge was essential to progressing as a lucid dreamer. <Lucy> What were some of the lucid dream challenges? <Robert> They varied. One month it was to find out what the symbols in the dream meant - and so I had a wonderful lucid dream of asking a dream character what he represented whereupon a voice boomed out of the sky with a response, followed by me asking for a clarification and the voice booming out the clarified response. It was simultaneously hilarious and insightful. Other challenges were things like developing a self affirmation in a lucid dream or getting precognitive information in a lucid dream. The value of these challenges were twofold: first, I learned how to take a waking task into the lucid environment, experiment with it and retrieve the information, and second, I learned that the realm of lucid dreaming was much, much deeper than I previously supposed and called into question many ordinary suppositions about one's daily (and often unquestioned) reality. <Lucy> And since then, what lucid dream interests have you investigated? <Robert> I got into various things. On one level, I was very interested in the apparent workings of the mind, while lucid in a dream. It seemed to me that if one became lucid and just observed, one could see the principles of the unconscious mind (assuming of course that dreaming and lucid dreaming take place in the unconscious). Personally, as I did this, I developed the idea that the detached lucid dreamer was seeing the unconscious in a state of Associational Entropy. Entropy is a term from physics that is defined as "the measure of a system to undergo spontaneous change". Association is a term used in psychology to suggest "a mental connection or relation between thoughts, feelings, ideas or sensations." As the dream events unfolded there seemed to be associational linkages amongst the objects or symbols in the observed lucid dream. When you stop in a lucid dream and simply observe, in my experience, things continue to happen. Cars move. People walk. All of this happens without the lucid dreamer "willing" it or "controlling" it (by the way, I really dislike people saying lucid dreaming is about "controlling" dreams; it is more accurate to say that lucid dreaming is about directing one's awareness in the dream). Since things continue to happen, it made me assume that there are underlying mental processes and that they likely follow certain principles. It reminded me of being in 8th grade science class, when we learned about "Brownian movement" or the continuing currents of movement in a 'still' glass of liquid water. The unconscious seems to be involved in its own Brownian movement, and one would suppose that there are some basic underlying principles that account for that. It seems to me that lucid dreamers could shed light on these issues of psychology and psychological mechanisms - perhaps better than many other approaches that come to mind! <Lucy> What else? <Robert> Well, I also explored various things like precognition while lucid dreaming. On my first try with this, I ended up lucid and then thinking, "How can I precognate, when I am cognating now?" Upon waking, I could see that I would have to plan to have the precognitive information be "apart" from me. That is, I would have to get it from a dream character or suggest that it would appear somehow. I felt that my precognitive lucid dreaming experiences were quite successful. Yet, I learned that one often has to translate that lucid dream data or response - and therefore if you screw up the translation or interpretation, then you may be disappointed. I also worked on other issues like mutual lucid dreaming with some excellent lucid dreamers, like Ed Kellogg and Linda Magallon. Basically, we set up a scientific protocol in which each person randomly selected a code word from a group of 100 words and a gesture from a group of 10 gestures. On a predetermined night, we were to become lucid and find the other individuals, and pass on our code word and gesture and receive their code word and gesture while taking observations about the lucid dream environment, and then wake up and send all of this to a third party "fair witness" for analysis. Here again, I feel we had some success, and learned a lot about mutual dreaming and telepathy and all. It was quite amazing actually. It also made me wonder why one doesn't hear more about experimentation with lucid dreaming. <Lucy> Do you feel that lucid dreaming is a personal, subjective event or a larger, mutual event? <Robert> Since I grew up in the Midwest and didn't have lucid dreamers to talk to, it surprised me that when I joined the Association for the Study of Dreams that other lucid dreamers and I had apparent commonalities of lucid experiences. These "commonalities" suggest that lucid dreaming may be less subjective or entirely intra-personal than normally supposed. While I could argue that there is an element of mutuality in some lucid dreams, it is a very complicated issue. For example, many of us lucid dreamers could talk about the common features of being in another's dream - how it differs and what it is like - and an objective observer would have a hard time denying the similarities - but explaining the whys and hows boggles the mind. <Lucy> What do you think is the future of lucid dreaming? <Robert> I hope that lucid dreaming will become even better known, due to movies like Vanilla Sky and the work of lucid dream proponents and researchers. I hope that people will go beyond lucid dreaming as an interesting curiosity and see lucid dreaming's potential to explore consciousness and effect our understanding of psychology, and our subjective reality and larger world. Also, I imagine
that individuals will begin to go deeper into lucid dreams and try to
find some boundaries to lucid dreaming's depths. About 8 or 9 years ago,
I ultimately decided to try and go "beyond lucid dreaming" -
beyond symbolism, beyond preconceptions, beyond expectations. At first,
I didn't realize what was happening, and I began to have some very unusual
and special experiences, which are actually hard to verbalize. To sum
it up, I think lucid dreaming has a "bright" future. Disclaimer: All material in The Lucid Dream Exchange is the copyright of the respective contributor, unless otherwise indicated. No portion of The Lucid Dream Exchange may be reproduced or used in any way without the expressed written permission of the individual author, or editors. Views and opinions expressed are those of the contributing authors and are not necessarily those of the editors of The Lucid Dream Exchange. ©The
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