David Jay Brown - Dreaming Wide Awake: Lucid Dreaming, Shamanic Healing, and Psychedelics

For Rebecca Ann Hill,
my lucid-dream girl come true

DREAMING
WIDE AWAKE

David Jay Browns book is a brilliant synthesis of current research, ancient and indigenous wisdom, and extensive personal experience. Based on a wealth of hard data, historical research, and dream diaries, Brown deftly ties together not only lucid dreams but also similar events from other altered states. While the book centers on lucid dreams, it incorporates parallel experiences in psychedelic use and shamanism, giving us, perhaps, the first sophisticated synthesis for exploring difficult to access realms of consciousness. Filled with practical and doable suggestions on how to enhance lucid dreaming and how to maximize its healing effects, Dreaming Wide Awake is a splendid, well-written, revelatory, yet pragmatic look at the dreaming mind.

JAMES FADIMAN PH.D., MICRODOSE RESEARCHER AND AUTHOR OF THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPLORERS GUIDE: SAFE, THERAPEUTIC, AND SACRED JOURNEYS

Encyclopedic yet personal, rigorous yet highly accessible, Browns book is enormously successful. The author covers every conceivable theoretical and practical aspect of lucid dreaming: from neuroscience to shamanism, anthropology to the occult, ethnobotany to telepathy, the electronic to the pharmacologic. In so doing, he brings clarity and relevance to this mysterious and potentially highly influential consciousness-altering tool.

RICK STRASSMAN, M.D., CLINICAL ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND AUTHOR OF DMT: THE SPIRIT MOLECULE AND DMT AND THE SOUL OF PROPHECY

For millennia, many tribal shamans have used lucid dreaming and psychedelic plants to obtain information that they have used in helping and healing members of their community. In this ground-breaking book, David Jay Brown has brought together findings from contemporary science to demonstrate the similarity between these two types of altered consciousness and how the insights they provide can help alleviate nightmares, restore health, hasten recovery from injuries, and even yield creative insights. Dreaming Wide Awake may evoke a new field of research, both experimental and applied, that will enhance human potentials in ways that have been too long neglected.

STANLEY KRIPPNER, PH.D., COAUTHOR OF EXTRAORDINARY DREAMS AND HOW TO WORK WITH THEM

With his customary precision and style, David Jay Brown illuminates the dreamtime... and he tells you how you can work and play in that dream space. An important book for true dreamers.

R. U. SIRIUS, MUSICIAN, DIGITAL CULTURE ICONOCLAST, AND AUTHOR OF TRANSCENDENCE: THE DISINFORMATION ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TRANSHUMANISM AND THE SINGULARITY

Kapow. Browns Dreaming Wide Awake connects the multidimensional dots that are strewn throughout the tiered cosmos. He goes far and deep into the mysteries of the dreaming mind and, even more impressively, does this with his feet planted on the ground and armed with a skeptical but compassionate outlook.

RYAN HURD, COEDITOR OF LUCID DREAMING: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON CONSCIOUSNESS IN SLEEP AND AUTHOR OF DREAM LIKE A BOSS

A fascinating read. With curiosity and heart, David Jay Brown invites the reader to explore a unique fusion of shamanism, psychedelics, and lucid dreaming. Watch the doors between the worlds swing open!

CLARE JOHNSON, PH.D., AUTHOR OF BREATHING IN COLOUR AND DREAMRUNNER

Though I have been fascinated by dreams my whole life and have had lucid dreams since I was a teenager, the genesis for this book was sparked during a sacred shamanic journey several years ago. During that particular voyage, like a bolt of lightning from the heavens, a detailed outline for this book was downloaded directly into my brain. I spent the next twelve hours writing down the outline, and then the next year researching and writing the book that you now hold in your hands.

First and foremost I extend my deepest gratitude to the spirit of the sacred mushroom, the voice of ayahuasca, the support of my ancestors, the extraterrestrial transmissions from other star systems, the divine communications of the cosmic deity, the independently functioning parts of my own brain, the universal mind, the alien, the Other, or whatever it is that inspired me to write this book and guided me through the process. I dont know what it is, but theres an intelligence far superior to that of humans that appears to communicate with us in our dreams, in our shamanic visions, and in the events of our daily lives, if and when we pay attention.

In his seminal book Communing with the Gods, about consciousness, culture, and the dreaming brain, anthropologist Charles Laughlin writes about his own writing process. He says, I have more than once had the sense that the book is writing itself. I know that feeling well! I was amazed at how this book developed, seemingly on its own, as fresh ideas and new directions just kept appearing in my head as I moved along with the project.

I would also like to thank the lucid-dream experts and researchers who have allowed me to interview them for this book: Stephen LaBerge, Robert Waggoner, Stanley Krippner, Charles Tart, Rick Strassman, Clare Johnson, Ryan Hurd, Daniel Siebert, Stanislav Grof, Jazz Mordant, and Ian Koslow. I am most grateful for your generous time and valuable energies.

Special thanks to the late psychiatric researcher Oscar Janiger, who introduced me to the scientific study of lucid dreaming; to my herbalist, Boa Cowee, for masterfully preparing many of the oneirogenic herbal tinctures that I tried for this book; and to Sherry Hall for her stellar help in transcribing the interviews I did.

Additionally, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the following people for their generous contributions and valuable support: Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, Arleen Margulis, Becca Ann Hill, Serena Watman, Audreanne Rivka Sheehan, Patricia Holt, Sara Huntley, Maria Grusauskas, Mariateresa Gutierrezmacanilla, Kelly Matthews, Peter Maich, Hana Fiona Theobald, Jon Graham, Keelin, Meriana Dinkova, Momo Mercurious, Mike Alperin, Jacob Andrade, Ania Grycan, Jess Buckner, Danielle Bohmer, Deidra Henry, Danelle Benari, Amanda Rose Loveland, Lily Ross, Erin Dellinger, Jessi Daichman, Sara Mokhtari-Fox, Selina Reddan, Veronika King, Jesse Ray Houts, Linda Parker, Denis Berry, Zach Leary, Thomas Graves, Rebecca McClen Novick, Annie Sprinkle, Bruce Damer, Kelly Hollerbach, Heather Goldstein Greenberg, Brandi Goldstein, Geoffrey and Valerie Goldstein, Louise Reitman, Sammie and Tudie, Rick Doblin, Amy Barnes Excolere, Suzie Wouk, Sherri Paris, Robert Forte, Valerie Leveroni Corral, David Wayne Dunn, Robin Rae, Brummbaer, Deed DeBruno, Randy Baker, Steven Ray Brown, Banna Federico, Anna Damoth, Alan E. Mason, Sandy Oppenheim, Lorey Capelli, Dana Peleg, Mimi Peleg, Bethan Carter, Al Brown, Cheryle and Gene Goldstein, Dina Meyer, Bernadette Wilson, Nick Herbert, Erin Jarvis, Jody Lombardo, Erica Ansberry, Jessica Ansberry-Gagnon, Goo Bear, Maria Ramirez, Linda DAmato, Nathan West, Paula Rae Mellard, Mike Kawizky, Linda Capetillo-Cunliffe, Ivy Summer Abshell, Alan Shoemaker, Massimiliano Geraci, Jeff Rosenbaum, Allisun Shine, Mark Van Thillo, Gaie Alling, Liza Gopika Lichtinger, Justin MacGregor, Lupita Uribe, Torrey Peacock, Robert J. Barnhart, Frank Allen Bella, Brittany Nicole, Susanne G. Seller, Teresa King, Ben Osen, Jim Steele, Patrice Villastrigo, Rupert Sheldrake, Tod Barnett, Dragonflower Lyoness, Arlene Istar Lev, Catherine McBride, Ralph Metzner, C. Michael Smith, Simon Posford, Massimiliano Geraci, and Dieter Hagenbach.