Thread: Rausis Method?

Holy moses, that is a cool technique! Thanks for linking that!
I gotta try this and prove to myself it's not bull. I've wanted a way to cheat REM, it looks like this is it!

I gave it few tries.
I chose a river sound and on my following dream there actually was a river along the dream scene.
Then I tried other techniques and forgot to come back to this technique.
It takes few trials to find the fine setting in term of volume, sound choice and timing.

I'm thinking of trying this method using Alarm Clock Xtreme. That way I can use one app for any number of alarms. What I intend to do is set a sound like "water" or a "bell" on the alarm and during the day before the LD attempt, play that sound many times and set a mantra such as, "when I hear the sound of...., I will realize I'm dreaming." I think that I will use a different alarm sound to initially slightly wake up, then use the sound I've conditioned myself to realize I'm dreaming as the second "going back into REM" sound that I hope will make me aware I'm dreaming. The nice thing about the app I mentioned is, you can have the sound turn off after any amount of time you'd like so you can make sure the alarm does not keep going and wake you up if you do become lucid. It seems to me that once you have the times and sounds fine tuned, this method could be a lot less disruptive to your sleep than WBTB or WILD. Unfortunately, this method could be disruptive to my wife's sleep, so I may have to try it while sleeping in the guest room.

Originally Posted by pdunc

I'm thinking of trying this method using Alarm Clock Xtreme. That way I can use one app for any number of alarms. What I intend to do is set a sound like "water" or a "bell" on the alarm and during the day before the LD attempt, play that sound many times and set a mantra such as, "when I hear the sound of...., I will realize I'm dreaming." I think that I will use a different alarm sound to initially slightly wake up, then use the sound I've conditioned myself to realize I'm dreaming as the second "going back into REM" sound that I hope will make me aware I'm dreaming. The nice thing about the app I mentioned is, you can have the sound turn off after any amount of time you'd like so you can make sure the alarm does not keep going and wake you up if you do become lucid. It seems to me that once you have the times and sounds fine tuned, this method could be a lot less disruptive to your sleep than WBTB or WILD. Unfortunately, this method could be disruptive to my wife's sleep, so I may have to try it while sleeping in the guest room.

One of the Rausis's point is that once you hear the sound and understand that you are dreaming, if you go away from the oniric source of the sound, you won't hear the sound anymore.
This point is something interesting to test, I don't know if it really works, but if it does, you don't need the real sound to be turned off. your subconscious is supposed to ignore it.

Also you don't need to train yourself during the day if you strongly think about it just before you go back to sleep after the first Alarm sound has awoken you.
you have to tell to yourself that you will fall asleep soon and will hear the sound in the incoming dream, and that if you do, you'll know you're dreaming.
here is where I found the sounds I used on my phone.

Oh great.

Another revolutionary technique that requires "[NO DREAMING JOURNAL] [NO REALITY CHECKS] [NO TRAINING] [NO VIZUALISATION] [100% EFFICIENT] (Caps his, not mine)" that's guaranteed to work every time. Just what impatient or frustrated newbies want to hear, if not what they perhaps need to hear (nobody wants to hear that LD'ing is a discipline that takes a while to master, and consistent LD'ing is the result of a strong lucid mindset, and not a technique).

Before I continue: I hope you can read the following while keeping in mind that in my opinion there is nothing wrong with this technique, and I certainly see it as being as useful as any other technique out there. That said:

This "revolutionary" technique is also, as so many of them are, essentially a version of techniques that have been around for decades, seemingly a WILD variant that includes things folks have been doing for a very long time; in fact, I could be wrong but believe I remember seeing a similar technique noted by d'Hervey de Saint Denys in his book on LD'ing that he wrote well over a century ago (no iPhone included there, obviously, or a snooze alarm, but the wake-up and return to sleep followed the same pattern). I actually own a special Zen alarm clock meant to gently alert me that I was dreaming, and the technique for using it was almost identical as that listed by Rausis-- when I was using it over a dozen years ago. Even before that, I had a thing called a dream speaker connected to my DreamLight (an early--and far superior -- version of LaBerge's NovaDreamer) that pretty much did the same thing. Both of these techniques worked okay, and I would recommend them (as I would this one), but they would have done nothing at all had I not been mentally prepared for lucidity by doing all those annoying daytime exercises like DJ'ing, self-awareness practice, RC'ing, etc.

I know nobody likes hearing this, but doing the painstaking work to get your your mind in the right place for lucidity is vastly more effective than any technique -- even the ones whose authors promise "100% efficiency."

I don't understand why people seem to think that the world began yesterday, and that nobody ever thought of techniques like this before. Trust me, we were all just as anxious for shortcuts and ways to avoid the real work of lucidity in previous generations (I believe that LaBerge's life's work, BTW, is at its core a quest for these shortcuts). Discoveries of techniques using snooze alarms have cycled in and out of the lucidity playbook many times, and likely more will appear in the future, with their creators just as ignorant of the fact that these things have been tried in the past, and, though certainly useful, they are not the magic wand we all want to have waved over our collective struggle for lucidity. In the end, what really matters for successful, consistent, lucidity, is a strong lucid mindset, a mindset based firmly on the fundamentals of self-awareness, memory, and expectation that is built with much time, effort, and patience. There really are no shortcuts; if there were, we'd all have been taking them from day one for years now, and many, many more people would be regularly lucid.

I guess you get my point by now. The constant parade of "revolutionary" techniques "guaranteed" to get you lucid on the first try that are basically rehashes of what dreamers have been using for years provides a steady distraction from the real work of successful, consistent LD'ing that threatens to tempt novices (and a few grizzled veterans, it seems) down a path that might start out great but will eventually lead to disappointment... yes, the placebo effect from doing this technique initially will likely find you getting lucid on the first couple of tries of this technique, but what happens after you become unconsciously accustomed to waking to hit that snooze alarm? If this technique works the hundredth time, without your ever needing to get your head in a lucid place, let me know.

tl;dr: Though it is nothing new, much less revolutionary, this really is a good technique, and worth trying, perhaps even worth making your go-to technique, as it was for me for a couple of years. But it is not a replacement for the workthat truly makes you lucid, the work that puts your head in the right place to respond to the technique every time, even after the placebo effect wears off... if techniques like this worked as advertized, the world of LD'ing would be a very different place, and would have been so for a very long time.

Sorry in advance if this seems negative or curmudgeony; it wasn't meant to be. I'm just trying to insert a bit of practicality here.

You, Sageous, look like a big Reality Check here
It was already said but i am always amazed by our luck to have such an experienced oneironaut between us.

The alarm based WILD is worth experimenting with, at least it is always a way to keep enthusiasm alive. In my own experience, combining 3 hour WBTB's with 15 minute interval 3seconds gentle beep sounds, resulted in lucidity 2 out of 3 times. Everyone is different, though. I credited the good results to the long WBTBs and the process of falling asleep (sometimes so difficult after a long WBTB).

But surely even if one gets lucid through an external means, one still needs to keep lucidity, remember dream goals, keep calm and balanced, and surely that calls for a little bit of daytime practice

I agree with what you said Sageous, and I also tried to avoid the "AMAZING, 100% WORK" appearance. it's like the author works this way, he is also the creator of the soon Instadreamer revolutionary incoming new stuff blablabla
So, like I said I tried to see beyond this SCAM appearance and to see what is this technique, what is new in it.

First, I don't see where you and VagalTone see this as a WILD technique.
It's not.

Basically it's rather a DILD technique starting from a first Alarm that is supposed to wake you up.
Then you stop it and another sound, totally different and not supposed to wake you up, is programmed to go off few minute later.
In the mean time, all you have to do is to return to sleep with the idea that you're gonna fall back to sleep very fast , thus that you're gonna dream (hopefully) , and you must tell to yourself that if you hear this sound, you're dreaming.
This is closer to a MILD technique but assisted with an external audio.

The new stuff, what I found interesting, but like I said I have no Idea if it actually works, is the idea that once you are lucid by hearing the sound, if you move away from its source in the dream the sound will disappear.

I wish I had a LD on my trials (but only tried a couple of time) to check this idea.
If this technique works, (to have lucid dreams) I don't see a need of doing all the extra work other DILD techniques are based on (RC, DJ, WBTB, etc..) but it does probably need a certain amount of prospective memory. not so much since you are supposed to fall back to sleep very fast.

Hey Sageous. Never believed that this technique was revolutionary, a shortcut, or a silver bullet to LDing, but I posted it because being somewhat of a newbie myself, I had never heard of it and it sounded interesting as a technique. I do agree with you that working on the fundamentals is the most important thing to do. I am working on it. But I was looking at this technique as something that would be less disruptive to my sleep, not so much a short cut. The times I have had successful WILDs, I would wake up, spend time doing WBTB, take some galantamine, and do the relaxation process for up to an hour before having a LD. Kind of an exhausting process that has made me wonder if the whole thing was worth it. Can't seem to wake myself up naturally to do DEILD. No real luck doing MILD. Only had one DILD. Just wanted to see if others had tried this and found it to work. It apparently did for you. Gotta try something while working on the fundamentals, so why not this?

+1 for alarm clock extreme. Only and best dollar I ever spent on lucid dreaming.

Edit: except books.

Originally Posted by Kaan

First, I don't see where you and VagalTone see this as a WILD technique.
It's not.

Okay; I just reread the technique and, sure enough, there is a loss of consciousness in the process and that would make this a DILD. Sorry I initially misunderstood; at a glance the whole thing sounded like a WILD, but upon further review DILD it is...My bad!

The change from WILD to DILD, though, doesn't give me reason to alter anything I initially said (except the WILD bit, of course!), or my caveat about "revolutionary" techniques that've been around for years and their limited ability to enhance our lucid experiences on a consistent basis.

Sorry, i didnt read the original tutorial so i took it for granted it was WILD. I think it was Sageous fault ehehe

Interestingly, I had an experience with an alarm in my dream a few weeks ago. I had an alarm set at a time that just happened to be during one of my R.E.M. periods. I did hear it in my (non-lucid) dream and dismissed it as my phone ringing in the dream, so I turned it off and the sound went away. Later in the dream, however, it came back and I woke up, but I think I started hearing it again because I was slowly waking up, not because of the expectation of the phone not ringing going away. Because of this experience I don't doubt the part that says you can make the sound go away.

This technique also presents something interesting that I did not know about - the R.E.M. period when first falling asleep. Is this significant enough to have a long, vivid lucid dream? Regardless, I thinks it's definitely worth trying for me since I would rather have a placebo-induced lucid dream than no lucid dream, but as Sageous pointed out, it's best to be safe and not forget about the other aspects of lucid dreaming.

Originally Posted by Astrok

Interestingly, I had an experience with an alarm in my dream a few weeks ago. I had an alarm set at a time that just happened to be during one of my R.E.M. periods. I did hear it in my (non-lucid) dream and dismissed it as my phone ringing in the dream, so I turned it off and the sound went away. Later in the dream, however, it came back and I woke up, but I think I started hearing it again because I was slowly waking up, not because of the expectation of the phone not ringing going away. Because of this experience I don't doubt the part that says you can make the sound go away.

This technique also presents something interesting that I did not know about - the R.E.M. period when first falling asleep. Is this significant enough to have a long, vivid lucid dream? Regardless, I thinks it's definitely worth trying for me since I would rather have a placebo-induced lucid dream than no lucid dream, but as Sageous pointed out, it's best to be safe and not forget about the other aspects of lucid dreaming.

Thanks for the input.
I tend to believe the brain is absolutely able to ignore the external stimulus to prevent the dreamer when waking up.
Especially during phasic REM.
these last few weeks I have been experiencing a lot with my REM-DREAMER to wake me up briefly during REM sleep to train at DEILD, and sometimes there is no way I can hear and see the flash/beeps the mask is producing.

I don't understand what is the interesting thing you didn't know about in your second paragraph and what your question exactly is.

I didn't know that when falling asleep you always experience a short REM period, which is what I get from the excerpt below.

"HOWEVER, WHEN YOU CUT YOUR SLEEP CYCLE DURING THE NIGHT, YOU WILL NOT INTERRUPT THE CYCLE, YOU WILL JUST "PAUSE IT" FOR A FEW SECONDS. WHEN YOU WILL GO BACK TO IT, YOU WILL EXPERIMENT [experience] SHORT HYPNAGOGIA + REM STATES.
THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT TO USE."

My question was are these "short hypnagogia + REM states" significant enough to have a long and vivid lucid dream?

Anyone had some success with this technique?

Had a go. No joy. Anyone else?