Photo by Colleen Vasu

I’ve been testing out a a lucid dreaming training technique with my Sirius Sound and Light Machine, and so far, the results are fascinating me.

If you’re unfamiliar with a Sound and Light Machine – also informally called a Mind Machine – it’s a device that combines binaural beats & brainwave entrainment, pumped into your ears via headphones, and pulsating colorful, psychedelic lights, shadowed over your closed eyelids with a pair of glasses containing multiple LED on each lense.

The idea behind Mind Machines is to induce a certain brainwave state associated with a desired goal.

For instance:

• Beta – associated with awareness, an engaged and alert mind
• Alpha – associated with a non-drowsy but relaxed, tranquil state of mind
• Theta – associated with creative states of mind – imagery, visualization. This state is present during dreams and REM state.
• Delta – associated with deep, dreamless sleep.

I’ve been using Session 8 on my Sirius mind machine, which lasts 25 minutes and goes from Beta, Alpha, Theta, in that order, as I fall asleep.

This is one of my favorite sessions to use because the visuals are just totally captivating.

Update: check out my extensive Sirius Mind Machine Review.

Occasionally, with and without the addition of smoking marijuana with the mind machine, this session has induced the feeling coming out of my body and merging with the “scene” the pulsating light show has created in my entire field of vision, which can become like a very deep bubble in which I feel myself coming into. (It’s hard to explain. )

I noticed recently how there is a mental trick involved in allowing myself to see or experience the visuals of the lights merging together into spirals and tunnels in which I feel myself coming towards and moving through. It involves letting go in a normal sense of viewing, and watching what’s happening in a more participatory manner, as if I weren’t just watching the scene but merging with the scene. It’s a strange combination of detachment combined with becoming.

I suspect this could also be described as viewing something with your “third eye”, if you want to put it in those terms. It also reminds me of how adventurous psychonaut Dan Carpenter recounts successfully moving into a high dose DXM trip in his book A Psychonaut’s Guide to the Invisible Landscape

Last week, I put on my Sirius and prepared to fall asleep, with the intention of retaining an inner awareness as I fell into the dream world.

My dream experiences that followed are really interesting.  Here’s an excerpt from my dream journal, where I divided the following experience into 3 different dream sequences:

I’m reading a book.  The words are clear as day. I am conscious enough to know I am dreaming. It’s almost like I’m awake but in a sort of dream trance. It’s shocking to me how clearly I can go from one word, one sentence and one paragraph to the next, and yet the words themselves lack any meaning as a whole.  Some of the words are made up, and all sentences in their entirety are nonsense. I had the thought that I could read this out loud in waking reality since I was conscious enough to know what my situation was.

And then:

Still in a similar trance state….

Looking at a scene of trees, sidewalks, park, people – it’s very 3d. If I can lose myself in things I will be able to merge into the scene.

Lastly:

spider hyper realism –
I see a spider and the detail is enormous. My vision lunges at it, and everything changes, like it was the entry point to moving into the dream.

…

This is what I think happened:

I was put into a sort of  dreaming, semi-lucid trance state by my mind machine. I was certainly conscious while reading the book in the beginning of this dream sequence. By the time the images had moved to a more involved, three dimensional scene, I was more on the sidelines watching it. Then, I see a spider and in the process of looking at the hyper detail of this insect, I finally joined the dream fully, yet lose conscious awareness of what was happening.

My thinking here is that using the Sound and Light Machine as a way to train myself to watch a developing visual scene, created by the pulsating lights, and merge with it, is very similar to the lucid dream induction technique where you remain aware of the hypnagogic imagery that slowly sneaks up on you, and continue to retain conscious awareness of the dream state, as those images blend into all out dream sequences.

The idea then is that a mind machine can help train you to do such a thing by allowing you to practice watching and then merging with the trippy visual scenes it creates, while you fall asleep.

I should confess, that I am quite skeptical of the straight forward claims put out by people selling sound and light machines and binaural beats.  There is no magic device to give you lucid dreams (not yet anyway.)

I think the truth is much closer to what I’ve experienced here – using a product or a technology definitely won’t guarantee or specifically cause anything to happen, but can be used as a training ground to leverage your skills and work with other lucid dream induction methods, with success.

In the meantime, I am curious to test this out further with my sound and light machine. Personally, as far as my own lucid dream skills come, I feel like I am onto something with using a mind machine to practice this strange experience of detaching yet simultaneously becoming or merging with my surroundings.

Your thoughts?

Photo by Colleen Vasu

Have you ever wanted to lucid dream? Maybe you’ve always been curious but didn’t know where to start? Maybe you’ve done it before but are having a hard time getting back into it?

Whatever your situation, if you’d like to have a lucid dream, the time to start is now. Below you can learn about and download every FREE lucid dreaming software program there is to help you on your journey. Feel free to document your experience by leaving a comment on this post

Happy Dreaming!

Free Lucid Dreaming Software Infinity Paradiso Lucid Dreaming Digibook LucidWarp Lucille 2.0 Reality Check BrainWave Generator You Are Dreaming Lucid Weaver Daldom Discreet Reminder Lucid Dreaming Assistant

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Infinity
Download: Click Here to Download!

DreamPort Home Page
Official Description:

“The purpose of Infinity is basically to allow the user to have lucid dreams in the time frame of 1 to 2 weeks. The idea is for people to use this to get out of dry-spells or for new-comers to use this to have their first lucid dream. ”

“It’s a day to day plan where you basically keep adding on more and more activities to a routine that you establish. The idea is to put your mind on over-load so that you have a lucid dream no matter what. By no means will this program give you the ability to lucid dream at will; however, it might put you in the right direction. By using this training software to have much needed lucid dreams, you’ll obtain more motivation and will be much more fit to persue the art of lucid dreaming on your own. Think of this as a powerful kickstart to get you going.”

Note: The Goods must be installed on your computer for Infinity and Paradiso to work. You only need to install it once. You need to have Adobe Flash Player.

Download Infinity!

Paradiso
Download: Click Here to Download!

DreamPort Home Page
Official Description:

“Have you ever wanted to construct your own dreamscape, full of anonymous objects and pleasures all from your choosing? Not only that, but would you want to have that dreamscape appear whenever you wanted to, whether you were lucid or not? Well, I’m hear to tell you that this task is not an impossible one, but rather a simple and fun one.

As more and more lucid dreamers enter this realm of dreamscape creation, many others are desiring the same satisfaction of being able to construct their own world. The problem is, many don’t know how, or where to start. Thus, I’ve created Paradiso, which provides descriptions, techniques, and advice on how to make all of this possible, leaving the user with one awesome result.

With this, you can create your very own extensive environment, and you can put anything you want in it. You could even put dream characters and signs up that have the sole purpose to tell you that you are lucid. Start the dream out in this environment all the time, then you can guarantee paradise and lucidity right from the beginning!”

Note: The Goods must be installed on your computer for Infinity and Paradiso to work. You only need to install it once. You need to have Adobe Flash Player.
Download Paradiso!

Lucid Dreaming Digibook
Download: Click Here to Download!

DreamPort Home Page
Official Description:

The Lucid Dreaming Digibook “is a compilation of all techniques popular and unpopular for the sole purpose of allowing the user to have a solid reference when needed.”

Download Lucid Dreaming DigiBook!

LucidWarp
Download: Click Here to Download!

DreamPort Home Page
Official Description:

“ Lucid Warp is a seven day training course that transforms you and your mind to allow yourself to Lucid Dream at will. Many people have called this idea the “Holy Grail” of Lucid Dreaming, and to be honest with you, it is.

You learn to believe and expect various things to happen by experimenting each day with new things. Every day builds up on top of the other, and end up giving you the ultimate power to lucid dream. You will also figure out how to control your mind, rather than have your mind control you, which can help you in so many things other than lucid dreaming.

You know what the best part about all of this is? It is that you only have to do this method ONCE. After that, as long as you keep the same state of mind as you did during the 7 Days, you will have a very successful lucid dreaming career; you could even lucid dream every single night if you wanted to!

During this course, all you have to do is believe, and you will be able to accomplish anything you set your eyes on.”

Download LucidWarp!

Lucille 2.0
Download: Click Here to Download!

Lucille Home Page
Official Description:

“Lucille is a mostly hidden application that pops up questions to help you doing reality tests. The questions can be customized. The look of Lucille can be changed through so called skins.”

Download Lucille 2.0!

Reality Check
Download: Click Here to Download!

Red Byte Home Page
Official Description:

“Use this program as a “random” alarm clock to remind you to do reality checks. This is a free program – share it with your friends. This program may help train you to be more aware of lucid dreaming.”

Download Reality Check!

BrainWave Generater
Click Here Download BrainWave Generator 3.1

BrainWave Generator Home Page
Official Description:

“Want to relax? Meditate? Learn faster? Focus attention? Increase your awareness? Try self-hypnosis? Just put on the earphones and let BrainWave Generator take you to the state of mind you want. The sound and visual stimulation functions of BrainWave Generator help you prepare for stressful situations or challenging tasks, improve learning results, alleviate sleeping problems and headaches and much more! BrainWave Generator generates binaural beats that change your brain frequency towards the desired state, be it relaxation or enhanced attention. In addition to using the more than 20 built-in brain wave entrainment programs, you can create your own programs (presets).”

Additional Info:

Brainwave Entrainment for Lucid Dreaming – A concise guide to tweaking the Brainwave Generator settings to create programs for lucid dreaming, hosted by the DreamViews forum.

Lucid Dreaming / Sleep / Dreaming Presets – User-rated presets from the BWGEN community.

Download Brain Wave Generator!

You Are Dreaming
Download: Click Here to Download!

YAD Home Page
Official Description:

“Hi I made this silly little program I call YAD ( You Are Dreaming ) for Windows-XP. When you run it, you will see the words “You are dreaming” moving across the screen, it’s small and gray so you may not notice it at first, it should be near the top of the screen. To change the Y location of it you can edit the yad.ini file, set a different location, and run the program again. To stop the program, double click on it ( it’s a little difficult to hit it because it’s a transparent window, so you may need to double click several times ) or use the Task-Manager to close it. The purpose of the thing is to subliminally put it into your head that you are dreaming.”

Notes: A bit more info on this program is available here.

Download You Are Dreaming!

Lucid Weaver
Download: Click Here to Download!
(directly to cellphone)

Lucid Weaver Home Page
Official Description:

“LucidWeaver is the world’s first lucid dreaming training software for mobile devices.

Lucid dreaming means knowing that you are dreaming while it is happening. It is a learnable skill that allows you to decide what is going to happen in your dream. LucidWeaver includes Dream alarm with sound cue which can be adjusted to a personal REM-sleep cycle for improving dream recall and lucidity training. Randomized reality tests can be set and it can be used as regular alarm clock.

With LucidWeaver as your constant companion in your mobile phone, learning the art of lucid dreaming is easier than ever.”

Note: LucidWeaver is free to try as a demo and then costs $19 euros.

Download Lucid Weaver

Daldom
Download: Click Here to Download!

Daldom Home Page
Official Description:

“Daldom is a cross platform audio lucid dream induction software.”

Download Daldom

Discreet Reminder
Download: Click Here to Download!

Discreet Reminder Home Page
Official Description:

“Discreet Reminder is a great tool to help you do reality checks, when spending time in front of your computer.”

Download Discreet Reminder!

Lucid Dreaming Assistant
Download: Click here to Download

No Home Page – This is some old DOS software!

Official Description:

“There are two versions of this program. A real existing version that you are (probably) using right now. And there is a version that only exists when you dream!”

Note: After using this program once, I had a lucid dream that night. You can read about the experience here.

Download Lucid Dreaming Assistant!

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Lucid Dreaming software!
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“What if you had the chance to do anything you wanted? What if right now, you could levitate out of your chair, and soar out the window and up into the clouds, observing every creation of your mind? What if you could live your ultimate dream like getting together with that crush, or becoming an actor/actress? What if I were to tell you that there was a way to do this every single night for the rest of your life?”

- From the Introduction to Infinity

Fifteen minutes ago, for the first time, I loaded up DreamPort.net’s Infinity Software for Lucid Dreaming program.

First thought: “Holy shit – this is awesome!”

(And free, too! )

I was immediately impressed by the beautiful music and great design. (Keep in mind the last software I used for lucid dreaming was a very basic DOS program written maybe 10 or 15 years back! (Which by the way, did help me achieve a lucid dream nearly immediately.))

The basic idea is that you do something everyday, building each day from the day before, that will increase your chances of having a lucid dream. The software program is divided up by days, and you’re not supposed to get ahead of yourself, so all I know so far is that I’m doing reality tests starting today. I came up with what I hope is a pretty good one: every time I check my email (which, dear god, is like a million times a day), I will ask myself if I’m dreaming, look at my hands, study them, count each finger slowly, then vividly recall what I was doing two hours ago, and finally ask myself “Am I dreaming? Is this a dream?” yet again.

I’m pretty damn excited about this! I work best with structure and to-do lists, and Infinity seems based around this concept.

I’ll share my progress here as it comes.

Check out the DreamPort site for more info on Infinity and other ambitious projects they’re up to.

PS. One thing that struck me as odd is the suggestion in the introduction to cease masturbating while using this program, under the claim that “research has shown that masturbation can effect consciousness and recall when sleeping.”

Can anyone cite the source on this?

One effect I noticed is that heavily focusing on having a lucid dream can be a trying ordeal. You can’t push yourself too hard; the subconscious seems to reflect this by pulling back and not giving you want you consciously aim for. Some nights I had no dreams (which is very rare for me) and one dream seemed to be a mockery of my intent to have lucid dreams! Sheesh! I’ve read about this happening a lot to folks on the DreamViews board too, so I’ll take it in stride knowing it’s part of the normal progression towards lucid dreaming.

I have been writing all my dreams down again for almost the whole month and this works wonders in increasing dream recall. I’ve been able to extract more meaning from my dreams lately, noticing some highly symbolic stories that parallel with what’s happening in my waking life. It’s very neat to actually see something of meaning so clearly come to you in a dream. I’ve also seen some sparks of progress towards falling asleep while mainting awareness. This is very exciting and would be a superior means of controlling dreams as opposed to other techniques like MILD or WILD.

And what about actually HAVING any lucid dreams?

Well, I’ve had 2 instances of lucidity as in the last two weeks.

One resulted from a false wakening where things looked out of order and then it hit me it was a dream. I tried to increase lucidity by shouting ‘”Increase lucidity now!” I read about others doing this to much success but it didn’t work so well for me on account of that fact that I didn’t have much of a voice in the dream. It was like I couldn’t make any real sounds.

The other lucid dream came about from a dream reality test where I was able to unattach and reattach my finger from my hand. This looked semi-real and very strange, almost like a scene from a movie where someone was piecing together bad memories.

Unfortunately both of these dreams didn’t last long at all – the description above describe the whole dream. But these small successes are a starting point, right?

If you’re not familiar with this technique, check out this link for an excellent concise explanation.

I did this last night and while I didn’t become lucid, I did succeed in taking one dream and making it (seemingly) last all night. Not exactly great since it wasn’t a particularly pleasant dream, but it shows the fact that intent has great effect.

I am endlessly awed by the study of dreams and the mind, the philosophical implications, etc. and have spent most of my time in pursuit of the intellectual knowledge behind this. This is a fancy way of saying I’ve done little to truly pursue lucid dreaming in any practical sense!

This is all going to change.

I’ll be reporting my experiences in their totality in 2 weeks, with an update midway through next weekend.