Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self (now in its tenth printing) is the account of a talented lucid dreamer who consciously sought out the principles of the dreaming realm, while lucidly aware.
Conscious in the dream state and able to interact with dream figures, objects, and settings, lucid dreamer Robert Waggoner experienced something transformative and unexpected. Using a counter-intuitive technique to ignore the dream figures and objects, he began to address questions and requests to the ‘awareness behind the dream,’ and received deeply creative, thoughtful and intelligent responses.
At first this seemed shocking, since psychology normally alludes to such theoretical inner aspects as the Inner Self, Subliminal Self, the Center, the Hidden Observer in vague and theoretical ways. Waggoner came to realize, however, that lucid dreaming offered a means to interact with that inner observer directly.
After almost a thousand lucid dreams, he concluded that while aware in the dream state, we have both a psychological tool and a platform from which to begin to understand dreaming and the larger picture of man’s psyche as well. In the book, Waggoner proposes five stages of lucid dreaming and guides readers through them, offering advice for those who have never experienced the lucid dream state and suggestions for how experienced lucid dreamers can advance to new levels of exploration.
For example, the Chapter on Healing Yourself and Others provides a dozen anecdotes of lucid dreamers who apparently succeeded in healing themselves while consciously aware in the dream state. How these lucid dreamers approached this, and what happened next, shows a small bit of the enormous potential of lucid dreaming as an alternative healing modality.
Lucid Dreaming offers exciting insights and vivid illustrations that will intrigue not only avid dreamworkers but anyone who is interested in consciousness, identity, and the nature of reality. In its tenth printing, the book shows new areas for scientific research, cultural exploration and personal growth.
Robert Waggoner is one of the more thorough “scientific” writers on lucid dreaming. He acknowledges that there are great unknowns about the phenomenon of dreaming and how the brain/mind works. Nevertheless, he presents plenty of credible accounts of his own explorations into lucid dreaming and reports the experiences of numerous other researchers. As someone who has summoned lucid dreams on command via self-hypnosis and tapped into creative resources that I’ve used many times in my career as a writer, I recommend his book. It definitely can help people unlock and open doors to the unconscious and remember the content of dreams.
Daniel E. Breau
This is a really inspiring book written by a very intelligent man. This is the most interesting and philosophical book I have read about lucid dreams and I have read a lot. He comes from an academic background but doesn’t ignore the bigger questions about consciousness and about reality. Love love this book! It has inspired me to start training myself again to lucid dream and I’ve had 3 in one month. I followed some of the author’s suggestions for working with dreams with surprising and delightful results. This is not a beginner’s manual of techniques so if you are just getting started start with something with basic instructions first or in conjunction with this book.
June
I experimented with lucid dreaming about 15 years ago, but got bored with it because I could never think of anything I wanted to do in the dream. The books available at that time focused mainly on curing yourself of recurrent nightmares, rehearsing for a scary real life event such as giving a speech, or having sex with your celebrity crush, but there was nothing like that I needed or wanted to do. I would usually just go flying, but it hardly seemed worth all the effort and attention I was putting into it. Now Robert Waggoner has introduced me to the possibilities that lucid dreaming can be a way to explore your deeper (or higher) consciousness, and has reawakened my interest. The dream journal (and journey) starts tonight!
RJBoyack