Dylan Tuccillo - A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics

Workman Publishing New York

1. Starting the Journey
2. Packing Your Bags
3. Arrival
4. Exploring a New World
5. Mastering the Terrain
6. The Next Frontier

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot, poet, playwright, aka Old Possum

For as long as there have been blank spots on the map, there have been pioneersthose unafraid of the fringe, who relish the untamed, the unknown, and the undiscovered. These individuals are inspired by the adventurous impulse to survey new ground, to chart new territory, or to discover new ideas. They are the innovators, creators, visionaries, and explorers.

Today we find ourselves on the brink of yet another frontier. You, holding this book, are about to enter this unknown world. Where are you going? Whats left that hasnt already been mapped out? The only blank spots left are in the depths of the sea and in the vastness of outer space, but you wont be going to either of these places. This journey is a tad different. You wont find this place on any map.

Youre not a stranger to this land. In fact youve traveled there every night of your life, whether you realize it or not. You leave your familiar world and experience this place, which has its own rules, customs, laws, and native population. You can traverse this frontier just like youd walk through a forest. Here, you can learn, discover, heal, and awaken to different realities.

If youve read the cover of this book, you know what were getting at: dreams! The goal of this book is to help you explore your dreams using the art of lucid dreaming. We will explain what lucid dreaming is and how you too can use it to survey the ground floor of your own subconscious. We will teach you how to become an oneironaut, a word derived from Greek that means dream navigator.

Lucid dreaming is the ability to know youre dreaming while youre dreaming. A lucid dreamer is able to go to sleep at night and wake up within his or her dream. With this unique awareness, you can generally behave like someone who is awake, exercising the free will, imagination, and memory of waking life. Once lucid, you can explore and even change elements of the dream.

If you were to travel down the Amazon River, youd need a field guide to tell you which plants to eat, how to navigate the terrain, and what to do when dealing with the natives. Consider this book your field guide to the dream world, a map to navigate through your subconscious. If youre a newcomer to lucid dreaming, the idea of exploring your subconscious may seem crazy or daunting. Dont you worry, we searched for the best techniques out there, made some improvements, and then boiled them down to their simplest forms. For those of you who have already experienced lucid dreaming, this guide will help you master this ability while traveling beyond what you thought was possible.

Well teach you:

1. How to reconnect with your dreams
2. How to have a lucid dream
3. What to do once youre lucid

This book is filled with step-by-step advice, stories from the dream world, and wonderfully maddening ideas. Its based on our own experiences with a decade of lucid dreaming as well as the real-life experiences of many other lucid dreamers, writers, and scientists. Our goal was to report back from the dream world and write about the things that we actually observed and experienced.

Unlike other field guides, this book is designed to be read from start to finish, just as if you were to travel down a jungle trail. Information from the first chapter will be used in the second chapter; tips from the second chapter will pop up in the third chapter, and so on. So try and hold off the urge to jump around.

Heres an important note to remember before embarking on this inner journey: While dreaming is a skill that can improve with practice and focus, its not something foreign to you. You dream. You do so every single night, whether you remember it or not.

Ready to start? Heres your first lesson. The icon of a compass, seen above, will appear many times throughout this book. Try this: Every time you see a compass, ask yourself the question Am I dreaming at this very moment? Look around you and really try to answer this question.

It may sound ridiculous to doubt your reality (of course youre awake, after all, youre reading this book). But for reasons you will soon learn, this reality check is the first step in waking up in your dreams. If youre able to master this technique, youll have no problem with lucid dreaming.

So take a moment now and ask yourself this seemingly bizarre question:

Am I dreaming?

Its April 12, 1975, in the Department of Psychology at the University of Hull in England. Researcher Keith Hearne is trying desperately to stay awake. He sits alone, monitoring a man named Alan Worsley as he sleeps, watching the monotonous up-and-down charting of ink on his polysomnograph machine. Worsley looks the same as any sleeper doeseyes closed, chest rising and falling. Its almost 8:00 a.m., and so far there is nothing out of the ordinary about this quiet Saturday morning. But in just a few minutes something incredible will occur.

At this very moment, these two scientists are attempting to make a discovery that will change history. They are trying to prove scientifically an esoteric ability that humans have known about for centuries: We can be consciously awake inside our dreams.

An obvious obstacle stands in the way of this would-be breakthrough: How can such a strange and ridiculous claim be proven? Worsley has experienced plenty of lucid dreams before. It wont be hard for him to become conscious inside of his own dream. But how does he prove that hes lucid? Its not as if Worsley can bring a camera into the dream world and bring back some Polaroids. To prove such an ability, our researchers will need a way to communicate from the dream world back to the waking world. They need some sort of phone line, a way for Worsley to call Hearne and tell him hes dreaming.

Since this feat has never been pulled off by modern science, these two men cannot rely on past experiments to figure out how to do it.

They are all alone, navigating the uncharted fringes of science. Luckily, Hearne and Worsley have an idea.