Summerlander

Date: 24/07/2023
Bedtime: 3.40am
Awakening: 9.35am
Return to bed: 10.30am
Method: deferred direct
Attempt: successful
Final awakening: 12pm
The Suffocation Experiment

DREAMING

I'm out with my father Donald Trump, who wants to bond with me despite our political disagreements. We are sitting outside a café in broad daylight when people walking past recognise the former president and start mocking him for his mannerisms and indiscretions. Trump smiles nonchalantly as if he's not bothered by the negative feedback but I feel uncomfortable. The more I look at my father, the more I feel sorry for him and my emotional compassion wells up. I realise I still love him and want to reassure him that not everything about him is bad. 'Cheer up, dad!' I tell him. 'I am very proud of everything that you have achieved—I mean, you managed to become president of the United States of America!' His smile widens. Trump is happy.

WAKING

I wake up realising the glaring identity anomaly: Donald Trump is not my father. Maybe a part of me wants to empathise more with disagreeable people and wishes to truly understand them to the core; as I write down the dream I wonder if it was the result of having looked into metta or loving-kindness meditation a few days ago when I decided to study Theravāda Buddhism. I let the dog out to do his business and use the loo myself. Then, I read my dream journal before returning to bed with the intention to have a wake-initiated lucid dream. It seems to take me a while to relax and I wonder if I spent too much time awake. Have I blown my chances? I toss and turn before settling on my side.

LUCID DREAMING

I hear a pulsatile hiss in my head and recognise there's a strong possibility here that I might succeed. I wait for this sound to peak to be sure that a good connection to the dream world is established, like I'm tuning into a different channel. Suddenly, I acquire a horizontal perspective of my bedside cabinet and I can see my mobile phone, on its stand, with a bright and colourful interface; crystal-clear vision switches on even though my eyelids were shut throughout induction. I reach for my phone, which feels solid to the touch, and bring it closer to my face to find that there is no text on it; gripping the object with both hands, I decide to try to bend it. The phone becomes malleable and I watch the multicoloured light on its supple screen stretch and bend. I am now quite sure I'm dreaming beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I discard the phone and get up to scan the bedroom as I rub my hands. Recalling the suffocation experiment, I begin to hold my breath with the idea of maintaining breathlessness until I wake up. I notice an extremely tall man in black standing by the door, observing me; his bald crown and grey horseshoe hairline makes him appear to be an old man, albeit a strong one. At this point, the sensation of holding my breath feels absolutely real, like soon I will need to resume breathing because the situation becomes increasingly desperate with each passing second. The man turns to the door, indifferent to my experiment, and as soon as he swings it open, I chase after him, gripping his arm in the hallway. This doesn't stop him as his black-sleeved arm easily comes away from its socket and the one-armed figure disappears as he walks down the staircase. I am still holding my breath and can't do it for much longer; I desperately want to breathe.

WAKING

I am back in bed, relieved to be able to breathe again. It felt like I had been holding my breath in my sleep. It appears that the very nature of this experiment leads to a premature awakening as waking in this context is pretty much synonymous with being able to freely breathe. My dedication to this experiment made the wish to wake up win out over my usual desire to prolong lucid dreaming.

Date: 26/06/2023
Bedtime: 4am
Awakening: 7.30am
Return to bed: 7.40am
Method: deferred direct
Attempt: successful
Final awakening: 9.30am
The Recalling Experiment


DREAMING

It's a dark night and I'm part of a brigade searching for an unknown enemy. Next to me, armed and wary of danger lurking in the dark, is the actor Bruce Willis. Suddenly, we observe the infantry being attacked by an invisible agent; petrified soldiers begin to levitate and haemorrhage from every orifice before being dropped from an altitude of fifteen feet by a mysterious force. Me and Bruce look at each other before running for our lives. We hide in a cave-like shelter and keep quiet, hoping that the enemy won't find us. There is a mutual agreement that we are no match for the invisible enemy who wiped out the infantry. We are probably the only two foot soldiers left. We lie down on a mattress on the floor and hide under the covers. I feel hot and sweaty.


WAKING

I feel hot and sweaty as I wake up to the sound of my alarm. I get my son up to get ready for school and, exhausted after having had a bad night, I return to bed. Lying on my back and relaxing, I wonder if I'll be able to have an out-of-body experience. I keep imagining standing at the foot of the bed and looking back at myself lying asleep. After a couple of lapses in consciousness (or so it seems), I succeed in reifying the thought of being out of bed.


LUCID DREAMING

It feels like I am actually standing next to the footboard and partially facing a wall which I proceed to rap in order to deepen my phantom environment. My wife rises from under the covers and asks me what I'm doing. 'I'm lucid dreaming!' I excitedly reply and begin expatiating on why it is amazing and deserving of joint exploration before pausing at the realisation that I've been talking to a figment of my dreaming mind. Tapping the wall appears to intensify the environment and the grainy surface melts like a white marshmallow as I press it with my fingers. At this point, I remember the recalling experiment (as part of a plan of action) as well as the previous nightmare where, as a foot soldier, I witness my brigade getting killed by an invisible agent.

I make an attempt to delude myself (according to this counterintuitive experiment) by entertaining the idea that the nightmare where the infantry perished was real and that I must've been knocked unconscious and carried to this bedroom replica by the invisible agent. Not feeling confused in the slightest about what's real and what isn't despite trying to contrive a confabulation, I also feel the need to tell myself that waking life memories were implanted in my brain by the enemy. This still doesn't seem to be enough as my sceptical mind emphatically rejects self-delusion for lack of evidence, so I tell myself that the enemy is conniving, that absolute certainty of any world being 'real' is impossible and that what I need in this situation is a leap of faith.

I penetrate the melting wall to find a peculiar staircase adorned with a myriad of glossy beads (instead of my youngest son's bedroom as would be the case in the real world). The stairs appear to reflect weak sunlight coming from arched, stained-glass windows displaying complex mandalas and I scuttle downstairs with the purpose of somehow finding and confronting my mysterious enemy. Before I can reach the exit of the building I'm in, however, I suddenly feel myself to be back in bed. Refusing to give in to these dispiriting sensations, I wilfully interpret them as the enemy magically pulling the wool over my eyes before forcing myself out of bed to glide out of the window with blurry vision.

I land on paving slabs in broad daylight and begin stomping the pavement, producing echoey footsteps that help me to intensify the scene. There is a hyperreal quality to the esplanade before me as I run alongside a concrete wall—at the end of which is the looming suggestion of a beach hiding behind it. I glance at my bare feet and notice crystalline water in the gutter running counter to my direction. I look up and see a man in black watching me before disappearing behind the wall towards the beach. I feel I must reach him as he might be able to lead me to my enemy. Reaching the end of the wall to access the beach (it never occurred to me to go through concrete as a logical shortcut), I come face to face with the figure wearing a black trenchcoat and a fedora hat. He's a dead ringer for the actor Ed Harris but his eyes are uncannily blue and his gaze chillingly penetrating.

'Where is the enemy?' I demand as I display my infantryman persona. 'The wizard is in the tower,' the man in black softly replies as he points to a lighthouse on a rocky promontory beyond the sandy beach. I waste no time in gliding to the top of the lighthouse, entering an empty garret overlooking a calm sea and cloudy horizon. Where is the 'wizard' who wiped out my brigade? Perhaps he is invisible in this very room. Could the man in black at the beach be the real enemy? I leap from the lighthouse and descend on the beach next to a stall that wasn't there before. The Ed Harris lookalike is there, apparently polishing an amulet and a few trinkets are on display. 'Are you the wizard?' I enquire. The man in black appears to be smirking as he turns his back on me before vanishing into his little shop as the beach fades.


WAKING

I dash off some notes in my journal in conclusion of this experiment. In hindsight, my lucidity was solid enough to maintain the knowledge that what was unfolding wasn't real. I never came to fully believing what I wanted to believe for the sake of this experiment. The most I could achieve was entertaining a what-if scenario, which is surprising because in many past experiences what usually takes effort is countering the loss of lucidity and preventing the manifestation of ordinary dreaming. Most of the time it felt like I was pretending to be a soldier looking for answers to see how it would influence the phantom world of lucid dreaming. Curiosity of what would happen if I entertained a mere hypothesis is what drove me. Deep down I still knew that I would eventually wake up to the real world where my family and everything I care about exist.

Date: 11/06/2022
Bedtime: 2.40am
Awakening: 7am
Return to bed: 7.20am
Method of entry: indirect
Attempt: successful
Awakening: 8.55am
DEILD: The Anesthesia Experiment


DREAMING

I'm a doctor with my own private clinic and patients are happy to see me save but one who proves to be very difficult and tests my patience to its limits. I end up battering him till he's unconscious and worry that I might have killed him. I check him with my stethoscope. Scene shift: I'm watching the British soap opera EastEnders and it feels like I'm in the scene as an observer. The setting is a pub, which is radically different from The Vic, and I witness Zack Hudson (played by James Farrar) losing the plot. The actor produces a broom and uses it to smash up the bottles of booze on display across the bar. The bartender, who happens to be the actor Peter Stormare, dashes around the wooden counter to hit Zack but this one is quite agile and ends up beating the former to a pulp. I am happy that Zack wins the fight because I remember Peter Stormare playing a wife beater in the film Chocolat.


WAKING

I scribble what I remember and note the identity anomaly (I'm not a doctor in real life), the inexplicable scene shift, the strong emotions of worry and excitement, the close-ups of celebrities and the impossibility of being inside a soap opera. After using the loo, I return to bed with a strong intention to enter the phase.


DREAMING

I believe I wake up to an empty bed and figure that my wife is already up and pottering about. I can hear crying coming from my youngest son's bedroom and find a strange tot there. I take it the little girl before me belongs to the neighbours who live above us and assume that my wife must have agreed to babysit for them but now she must be busy with chores. I pick up the child and tap her on the back. She stops crying after I hand her a teddy bear and carry her back to my bedroom to keep her entertained. After a short while she cries for her mum and I take her to see the view from my balcony but I have trouble opening its door. I hear noises outside and music followed by a propagandistic voice, making me think that the Labour Party have gone bonkers in trying to persuade people to vote for them. Scene shift: My eyes are shut and I feel rested on a mattress under a thick cover.


LUCID DREAMING

I'm in bed and it occurs to me that I could be dreaming of waking up. As I get up and start rubbing my hands for clarity (realism: 90%), I find that I am not wrong when I glance at the curtains covering the balcony door; they are chartreuse instead of a greyish colour as is the case in the real world. As I move around the bed, sight declines to a blurrier state and my eyes feel crusty. (Realism: 50%) Rubbing them whilst wishing for clarity restores realism to an even greater decree than previously and the inaccurate bedroom replica becomes clear. (Realism: 100%) I exit the room into the hallway and look at my reflection in the mirror on the wall at the top of the staircase. I'm wearing a grey hoodie and shorts and my face is quite realistic. I feel slightly excited at the colourful detail of my surroundings and start dancing in front of my reflection, which mimicks my movements. An apt, funky beat comes on—as though someone turned up the volume on a stereo—and then I hear a voice behind me: 'What are you doing, dad?' I turn to see another bedroom adjacent to mine, which doesn't exist in real life, and a perplexed eldest son is standing in the doorway. I smile at him and say as a means to reinforce to myself the nature of what's happening to me: 'I'm having a lucid dream!' He turns around and mutters, 'Okay, dad!' I pat him on the back and tell him I love him, apparently causing him to shrink back to his pre-teen phase, before he utters in a childlike voice: 'Love you too, dad!'

I run downstairs and find that all the lights in the house appear to be on. I enter the loo expecting to find an astronomy-themed mural on black walls but instead encounter a comical poster depicting cartooned police officers resembling Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons having gay sex. I find it hilarious but at the same time disappointed that my mind did not produce what I was looking for. I remember the anesthesia experiment and think of getting a syringe from my right pocket. As I reach to check the pocket, I feel a pinprick on my leg as though the object is already there and piercing my skin. I pull out an empty syringe with a long needle and go to the kitchen in order to find an anaesthetic to fill it with. I approach the fridge-freezer's water dispenser and imagine that it might produce a numbing drug in liquid form but quickly change my mind and instead open the refrigerator to find a plastic bottle filled with a colourless analgesic. I pierce the bottle with the needle inside the fridge and draw the fluid into the tube, subsequently stabbing my right leg with the syringe, noticing that the pinprick is not as painful as the one I experienced earlier. I inject the fluid into my leg, believing its anaesthetic properties to be immediately effective. The leg goes numb as I wished and there is no sensation when I pinch it. I immediately force myself to wake up.


WAKING

Now awake, I quickly pinch my right leg but find that there is feeling there as normal in the real world, contrary to what was experienced (not felt) in the phase state. Also, I made the mistake of not performing the experiment as the first task of my plan of action. If required, I shall execute this task again.

Date: 04/06/2022
Bedtime: 3.30am
Awakening: 8am
Return to bed: 8.30am
Method: dream consciousness
Attempt: successful
Final awakening: 11.30am
Phase experience: No Murals To Be Found


DREAM STATE

I'm a member of a boarding school and meet up with a group of boffins in the woods at night in order to converse with them. It's our secret rendezvous to eat what we are reputedly not allowed: chocolate muffins. Suddenly, our indulgence is interrupted by a lorry driving through the forest towards our social circle, causing my uniformed friends to disperse. Subsequently, I explain to someone that I had been given the opportunity to devour a delicious chocolate muffin and that one of the other lads had a caramel one which I tasted vicariously, an amazingly advantageous ability which is deemed to be completely normal.

Scene shift: I'm on a small island which is the stage for a reality TV show, having somehow landed there and immediately regarded as a mystery guest by eminent contestants. Ulrika Jonsson asks me why I'm so short, making me feel inadequate and a little self-conscious. I do my best to speak graciously and politely—partly to make up for a perceived, physical shortcoming. However, no matter what I do, I feel like an alien or an outsider. I spot Xavier Bardem aboard a luxury boat sailing on a moat surrounding the villa and, feeling starstruck, I tell the others I'm quite fond of the actor. I am ushered into their residence and Ulrika shows me around. I clock a screen displaying a picture of me as a new contestant and notice that my face resembles that of Christopher Hitchens'—making me think that I am unconsciously emulating the public intellectual's expressions due to having watched him debate Robert Wright on YouTube.

Scene shift: I meet up with Anne-Marie as it's her birthday and she gives me a lift in a convertible from the close to a strange underground workshop. She is dressed up like a dog's dinner, all in leather and curiously a lot shorter than in real life. I give her a big hug, a kiss and wish her a happy birthday.


WAKING STATE

I realise that Anne-Marie does not drive and her height was inconsistent with reality (the impossibility of my former neighbour being considerably shorter than I remember is dismissed by a focus on, and delight in, an inflated ego towering over her when we embrace). The uncritical assumption that it was her birthday betrays a mnemonic failure because her birthday has already been and I messaged her on Facebook wishing her a happy one. Then there is an ID anomaly that also makes me considerably younger than I am in real life: I thought I was part of a coterie of boarding school boffins; on a separate oneiric occasion, my countenance resembles that of Christopher Hitchens' beyond just an emotional expression.

Unusual situations to look out for are exemplified in the dream scene where a lorry interrupts a 'muffin rendezvous'. Flawed logic that tasting a muffin vicariously through another boffin's taste buds is perfectly natural, when it is an impossibility, was present in the dream state. Scene shifts are common, too: I was on a reality TV show and suddenly, it is Anne-Marie's birthday. I have also been dreaming about celebrities every night: Xavier Bardem and Ulrika Jonsson. After using the loo, I return to bed with the intention to induce a lucid dream. I try the wake-initiated approach but fail to relax sufficiently on my back for about ten minutes, deciding afterwards to turn on my side and fall asleep.


DREAM STATE

During the day, a mustachioed food vendor is offering quiche to my family through the kitchen window of a radically different house. Inconsistently, he regales us with cheese sandwiches and charges after his so-called samples. I point out to my family that what we are getting is not quiche, but they say it's good and worth buying. Scene shift: at night, in my bedroom with Alfie and he tells me someone is outside. I open the balcony door to discover an architectural anomaly—there is no balcony; instead, a porch with two approaching teenagers wielding toy guns, and playfully pretending to be burglars, is manifestly before me. To my right, a staircase leads to the street below and next to it I make out strange neighbours arriving before entering the house next door. Dwelling on the structural inaccuracy, I conclude that I'm dreaming.


PHASE STATE

I rub my hands to stabilise the dream world. Returning to the bedroom replica, I decide to glide downstairs—encountering strange globular objects floating in the air at the bottom of the staircase—and head towards the loo whilst expecting to encounter a mural displayed on black walls for artistic inspiration but never reach my goal. I believe I wake up but still test the bedroom environment just to make sure. At the foot of the bed my fist goes through the carpeted floor and I know for sure that my surroundings are oneiric in nature. I sink into the floor in order to land in the loo imagined to be directly below so that I may find a mural in another attempt to seek artistic inspiration, but I descend into a dark space filled with some kind of pressure that almost feels like gelatine restricting my movements. Spinning causes the surrounding darkness to be replaced by an upstairs environment more congruous with my former address at Lea Close than the current one at Gardner House. Jumping out of one of the windows of an oneiric version of my former abode lands me on a fire engine parked right outside the front door. Upon seeing a party taking place in the opposite house with some people outside beckoning to me, I descend from the large vehicle to take a gander. Amongst the dream characters inviting me in are Poca and Andy Waters, who call out my name. Inside the house I find a lot of confusing but colourful decorations but no murals to be found. I lose lucidity at the party.


DREAM STATE

The party is characterised by debauchery and overall hedonism, including a butch lesbian pursuing me whilst declaring her lust for 'little boys'. Scene shift: I walk away from Lea Close with my mum, who complains incessantly about my former neighbour from hell, Helen, pointing out how conniving the woman can be. My mother wants me to go with her to confront our awful neighbours who are apparently near the local shops. I look back at my former house and see Stacey's silhouette behind a glazed front door and can tell she is wearing colourful summer clothes.


PHASE STATE

I'm back in bed and my head is hissing—a clear indication that I am in the hybrid phase state that makes lucid dreaming possible., I get up to what I recognise to be an inaccurate bedroom replica and therefore an oneiric environment. I search the house for murals, gliding faster than anybody could run, but find nothing, eventually flying out of the window of Melody's room to encounter a rustic vista radically different from Crane Park in the real world. The grassy field is missing and I'm flying over a muddy, tree-lined track with houses on either side (instead of a block of flats on the left as viewed from Mel's room in the real world). The houses are beautiful—some of them wooden and reminding me of the Old West—and curiosity gets the better of me. Descending to check out these properties, I expect that they also hide murals. I find empty rooms everywhere, finally coming upon a room with two beds ostensibly hiding sleeping people under their covers. The first bed I uncover is empty; the other turns out to hide a soft toy resembling a little dog that gradually morphs into a teddy bear. I wake up.


WAKING STATE

Scene shifts are quite frequent from daytime to nighttime scenes. The abodes are never quite right and there is a sense of traveling back in time to old addresses or neighbours that don't exist (nobody lives to our left). Unusual situations also come in the form of hedonistic parties and social contradictions, such as Poca and Andy Waters in the same room, often occur. It is a shame I couldn't find oneiric inspiration for a mural—I guess I must be more insistent in the dream world next time.

Date: 22/05/2022
Bedtime: 2am
Awakening: 5.53am
Return to bed: 6.10am
Method of entry: dream consciousness
Attempt: successful
Awakening: 8.15am
Phase experience: The Guitar Experiment


DREAM STATE

I'm walking towards a nighttime wilderness in England with my former schoolmate Javed and a Sri Lankan punter from my former days as a bookie; both men are willing to have a friendly fight and I'm the umpire reminding them to play by the rules and that they are not to get seriously injured as both are family men. We jump over a brick wall and the fight is about to commence when I spot what look like a couple of Kodiak bears approaching from a distance and hurtling towards the men. Eventually, the ferocious beasts catch up to them and both faint; I hide behind a tree as I believe the would-be fighters are about to be devoured. The animals are not bears at all seen as they possess a larger and quite uncanny presence—they remind me of a cross between a lion and a rhinoceros but overall redolent of the demonic hounds in Ghostbusters. I am petrified and in awe of such creatures which are not officially known to exist. I hear fingers clicking and the beasts freeze next to the unconscious men. Not far, I see Judi Dench (the actress who plays 'M' in 007 films) standing in front of a building that wasn't there before which I take to be a top secret facility. I immediately get the impression that she controls the hellish hounds and, approaching, she snaps her fingers again. Huge mandibles grip the men's limbs and a jerk accompanied by a crunch rouses them back to consciousness. I am taken aback by this nifty trick as the men scram in a panic. It isn't Javed running alongside the Sri Lankan punter; it is now Bob Hoskins. I furtively get away and encounter my friend Lizzie Bowman in the wilderness who also witnessed Judi Dench's hounds. We run together and there is an impression that we must know where to tread because England is now swarming with lions and there is the added challenge that they move around. It feels like a precarious memory game.


WAKING STATE

I record what I can remember and note potential dream cues such as the social contradiction of Javed and my former customer, stark elements from my past, the unlikely situation of being the referee of an agreed upon fight in the wilderness, seeing celebrities, shapeshifting, impossible monstrous animals and the threat of lions. I also identify schematic associations by my dreaming mind, e.g., the night before I dreamt of a giant Venus flytrap similar to the one in the film Little Shop of Horrors which happens to star Rick Moranis who is also in Ghostbusters. I return to bed with the intention to induce a lucid dream and fall asleep.


DREAM STATE

Me and a group of people are sat around a table. It is my understanding that this is a therapy group session and it is peculiar that every male—myself included—is topless and we have to present the females with instances of child abuse and domestic violence. A male psychotherapist interrupts the session to announce that there's been a mix-up and some of us are in the wrong group—I happen to be one of the misplaced ones. I am invited to leave the room for a break before embarking upon finding the right room. One side of the room is missing a wall and I use this wide gap to jump down to a dark underground sewage system resembling what I encountered under a bridge in a recent lucid dream. This is somewhat familiar! What am I doing here? I'm dreaming!


PHASE STATE

I tell myself I no longer need to re-enter the building behind me in order to look for the new therapy room. Everything is a very elaborate illusion. (Realism: 90% gradually making progress towards 100% as I rub my hands.) It feels like a nighttime environment but I am now in a tunnel and see light at the end. I glide towards the arched opening revealing a daytime, urban environment where I come upon a river—beyond it, near the horizon, I see a pillar-shaped mountain that reaches all the way to the clouds, making for an odd panorama. I struggle to recall the experiment I'm supposed to execute and believe I'm waking when the surroundings fail even though I strenuously rub my hands in order to heighten tactility. I'm in bed, apparently having woken up, and tell my wife I just had a brief lucid dream but failed to remember the experiment. 'Next time!' she says. I look at my hands and they look normal but decide to do a reality test nonetheless by pushing my right index finger through my left palm; the digit goes through my hand at a push! I'm shocked to discover I just had a false awakening and start deepening the phase by rubbing my hands as the realism is now only 35% that of the real world and the bedroom replica got darker since I falsely awoke. I reach for my electric guitar in the corner of the room and realise it is a lot smaller than it's supposed to be when I pick it up. The instrument is still in its case, which I struggle to unzip, so I decide to play it by pressing the strings over the nylon fabric. As I feel the strings through the gigbag, I hear the electric wailing sound of the guitar even though it's unplugged. I start randomly shredding on the fretboard (which is something I struggle with in real life) to produce a surprising classical rock sound in the style of a musical prodigy like Yngwie Malmsteen. My experience is more tactile and auditory than visual at this point. (Realism: 70%) I revel in the elaborate solo I'm producing until the environment fades and the sound peters out.

I believe I have woken up. I get out of bed and walk towards the balcony door to part the curtains and check what the weather is like. It looks dismal outside: the sky is grey and overcast. Beyond the neighborhood, I make out a strange cloud formation. The more I peer at it, the more the sky turns pink and the more a fiery cloud manifests in the shape of a wide column with a cauliflower-like top. That is weird! This mushroom-shaped phenomenon looks like an atomic bomb has gone off! Could it be that I just had another false awakening? My index goes through my palm again, confirming I'm still dreaming and I open the balcony door. (Realism: 100%) I want to play guitar again but the corner of the room where the instrument is supposed to be, to my left, is out of reach. I don't want to waste time so I reach behind the curtain, to my right, expecting to find a guitar there. To my surprise, I find my old V-shaped guitar, which I sold years ago, leaning against the wall. I start playing a melody similar to the first solo in the song 'Master of Puppets' by Metallica. Curiously, each note I play simultaneously causes the now fiery sky to reverberate. I'm awed by the beauty of the sounds and the colours before me and subsequently all my senses fade, leading to wakefulness.


WAKING STATE

It is worth mentioning that I have some experience with music as an amateur piano and guitar but I must say that in the phase I played more confidently and easily reached the level of a virtuoso. This experience won't turn me into a great guitarist overnight, but it has, at least, inspired me greatly.

Date: 22/05/2022
Bedtime: 2am
Awakening: 5.53am
Return to bed: 6.10am
Method of entry: dream consciousness
Attempt: successful
Awakening: 8.15am
DILD: The Guitar Experiment


DREAMING

I'm walking towards a nighttime wilderness in England with my former schoolmate Javed and a Sri Lankan punter from my former days as a bookie; both men are willing to have a friendly fight and I'm the umpire reminding them to play by the rules and that they are not to get seriously injured as they are both family men. We jump over a brick wall and the fight is about to commence when I spot what look like a couple of Kodiak bears approaching from a distance towards the men. Eventually, the ferocious beasts catch up to them and both faint; I hide behind a tree as I believe the would-be fighters are about to be devoured. The animals are not bears at all as I see that they have a larger and quite uncanny presence—they remind me of a cross between a lion and a rhinoceros but overall redolent of the demonic hounds in Ghostbusters. I am petrified and in awe of such creatures which are not officially known to exist. I hear fingers clicking and the beasts freeze next to the unconscious men. Not far, I see Judi Dench (the actress who plays 'M' in 007 films) standing in front of a building that wasn't there before which I take to be a top secret facility. I immediately get the impression that she controls the hellish hounds and, approaching, she snaps her fingers again. Huge mandibles grip the men's limbs and a jerk accompanied by crunch rouses them back to consciousness. I am taken aback by this nifty trick as the men scram in panic. It isn't Javed running alongside the Sri Lankan punter; it is now Bob Hopkins. I furtively get away and encounter my friend Lizzie Bowman in the wilderness who also witnessed Judi Dench's hounds. We run together and there is an impression that we must know where to tread because England is now swarming with lions and there is the added challenge that they move around. It feels like a precarious memory game.


WAKING

I record what I can remember and note potential dream cues such as the social contradiction of Javed and my former customer, stark elements from my past, the unlikely situation of being the referee of an agreed upon fight in the wilderness, seeing celebrities, shapeshifting, impossible monstrous animals and the threat of lions. I also identify schematic associations by my dreaming mind, e.g., the night before I dreamt of a giant Venus flytrap similar to the one in the film Little Shop of Horrors which happens to star Rick Moranis who is also in Ghostbusters. I return to bed with the intention to enter the phase state and fall asleep.


DREAMING

Me and a group of people are sat around a table. It is my understanding that this is a therapy group session and it is peculiar that every male—myself included—is topless and we have to present the females with instances of child abuse and domestic violence. A male psychotherapist interrupts the session to announce that there's been a mix-up and some of us are in the wrong group—I happen to me one of the misplaced ones. I am invited to leave the room for a break before embarking upon finding the right room. One side of the room is missing a wall and I use this wide gap to jump down to a dark underground sewage system resembling one I encountered under a bridge in a recent lucid dream. This is somewhat familiar! What am I doing here? I'm dreaming!


LUCID DREAMING

I tell myself I no longer need to re-enter the building behind me in order to look for the new therapy room. Everything is a very elaborate illusion. (Realism: 90% gradually making progress towards 100% as I rub my hands.) It feels like a nighttime environment but I am now in a tunnel and I see light at the end. I glide towards the arched opening revealing a daytime, urban environment where I come upon a river—beyond it, near the horizon, I see a pillar-shaped mountain that reaches all the way to the clouds, making for an odd panorama. I struggle to recall the experiment I'm supposed to execute and believe I'm waking when the surroundings fade even though I strenuously rub my hands in order to heighten tactility.


FALSE AWAKENING

I'm in bed, apparently having woken up, and tell my wife that I just had a brief lucid dream but failed to remember the experiment. 'Next time!' she says. I look at my hands and they look normal but I decide to do a reality test nonetheless by pushing my right index finger through my left palm; the digit goes through my hand at a push!


LUCID DREAMING

I'm shocked to discover I just had a false awakening and start deepening the environment by rubbing my hands as the realism is now only 35% that of the real world and the bedroom replica got darker since I falsely awoke. I reach for my electric guitar in the corner of the room and realise it is a lot smaller than it's supposed to when I pick it up. The instrument is still in its case, which I struggle to unzip, so I decide to play it by pressing the strings over the nylon fabric. As I feel the strings through the gigbag, I hear the electric wailing sound of the guitar even though it's unplugged. I start randomly shredding on the fretboard (which is something I struggle with in real life) to produce a surprising classical rock sound in the style of a musical prodigy like Yngwie Malmsteen. My experience is more tactile and auditory than visual at this point. (Realism: 70%) I revel in the elaborate solo I'm producing until the environment fades and the sound peters out.


FALSE AWAKENING

I believe I have woken up. I get out of bed and walk towards the balcony door to part the curtains and check what the whether is like. It looks dismal outside: the sky is grey and overcast. Beyond the neighborhood, I make out a strange cloud formation. The more I peer at it, the more the sky turns pink and the more a fiery cloud manifests in the shape of a wide column with a cauliflower-like top. That is weird! This mushroom-shaped phenomenon looks like an atomic bomb has gone off! Could it be that I just had another false awakening?


LUCID DREAMING

My index goes through my palm again, confirming that I am still dreaming and I open the balcony door. (Realism: 100%) I want to play guitar again but the corner of the room where the instrument is supposed to be, to my left, is too far from me. I don't want to waste time so I reach behind the curtain to my right expecting to find a guitar there. To my surprise, I find my old V-shaped guitar, which I sold years ago, leaning against the wall. I start playing a melody similar to the first solo in the song 'Master of Puppets' by Metallica. Curiously, each note I play simultaneously causes the now fiery sky to reverberate. I'm awed by the beauty of the sounds and the colours before me before all my senses fade and I wake up for real.


WAKING STATE

It is worth mentioning that I have some experience with music as an amateur piano and guitar but I must say that in the lucid dream I played more confidently and easily reached the level of a virtuoso. This experience won't turn me into a great guitarist overnight, but it has, at least, inspired me greatly.

Date: 05/05/2022
Bedtime: 3.15am
Awakening: 7.10am
Return to bed: 7.20am
Method of entry: dream consciousness
Attempt: successful
Awakening: 11.15am
DILD: The Insertion Experiment

DREAMING

I'm queueing behind a man in a shop. I'm next to be served but actress Julia Roberts jumps in front of me. She briefly looks back at me and I shake my head in disapproval before saying with sarcastic chivalry, 'Go ahead, you first!' Scene shift: I'm playing computer games with my wife in my youngest son's bedroom. Suddenly I'm by myself and several screens surround me, allowing me to switch from one game to the next without wasting time. I tend to select fighting over racing games. Suddenly, I'm inside one of the games—which takes a life-like appearance—and I observe people sink into walls with water flowing over their composite-stone surfaces; it seems that whoever gets too close to these peculiar walls ends up literally flushed away, vanishing into their deep gaps. The environment is like a gallery and people are warned to stay away from the walls. I pose for a picture with actor Cuba Gooding Jr. and the photographer accidentally reverses into a wall. I try to save the man by attempting to grab him but he gets flushed away pretty quickly.

WAKING

I wake up at the sound of the alarm and make some notes in my journal before getting my son up for school. I realise that I keep dreaming about celebrities lately, a theme which could turn into a potential dream cue. Playing computer games in my son's bedroom never happens and I also identify two instances of mechanical weirdness, such as, multiple screens and the subsequent flushing system on slippery wet walls observed after the impossibility of suddenly appearing inside a life-like game. Feeling tired, I return to bed.

DREAMING

At a nightclub a stately Rastafarian in dreadlocks insists that I stand in the corner of the dancefloor. This makes me very angry, especially when he refers to me as 'bitch'. I vehemently refuse to do as he says but he continues to press me so we lock horns and I end up killing him by bashing his head on steps at the edge of the dancefloor. I hear calls for security and scram as guards walk in my direction and call the police. Frightened, I exit the building, noticing that I am completely covered in blood. I meet up with my friend Musaddique who promises to help by taking me to his house. When we get there he tells me his door is the fourth one from a brick wall, but I see that the fourth one is blocked by a fence, so I ask him if he is sure and he appears confused. Weirdly, he starts counting doors before telling me that perhaps it's the third one. 'Do you not know your house?' I tease him before we enter the house and meet his family—which consists of his parents, his grown-up sister and some little siblings. Scene shift: It's time to go and, coincidentally, the back door of Musaddique's house allows direct access to a train station platform.

I am kindly given a travelcard so I can get a train home. As I head for some barriers beyond which some information screens are visible, I hear Musaddique and his sister calling me. I turn around to see them running towards me. They want the travelcard back because, as it turns out, they will need it. When I hand back what they gave me previously, I notice that I have two blue travelcards made of plastic, making them resemble my citizen card. I find it a little strange but reason that they must've given me two passes by mistake. They turn around and presumably start walking back to their house. I reach for my wallet and realise that it's missing so I panic. How will I get home now? I can still see the siblings walking at a distance and rush after them in the hope of borrowing some money to get home. Suddenly the platform is bustling with people and I lose them. 'Where are they? They were just here!' I think to myself. Feeling lost and confounded by their sudden disappearance, I begin to wonder if I'm dreaming. It's the only explanation ...

LUCID DREAMING

I no longer worry about anything but feel curious when I see Musaddique get on a train with the crowd. (Realism: 100%) The sliding doors close but I pass through the carriage like a ghost, encountering some resistance as I do so. I can see inside the train as I hover near the ceiling. A semblance of Musaddique and the rest of the passengers look up from their seats. Wondering about what reaction I might get, I say to Musaddique, 'Don't bother with the travelcard! This is a dream!' Musaddique and the passengers start hooting with laughter as if they had been actors all along in some Truman show and I just got 'punked'. I feel like I'm surrounded by tricksters as I stand in the aisle thinking that I must be careful not to get sucked into a dream plot.

I remember the Insertion Experiment and quickly lift a white shirt I'm wearing to plunge my right hand into my belly. As I watch my hand getting gradually absorbed by my torso, I make the following observations: there is some resistance, there is no blood, and there is no pain; as I wiggle the hand inside my tummy to feel for organs, I encounter a vacuous pressure—there is more feeling in my hand than my stomach area and no organs to be found. The environment begins to fade and I wake up eager to record my observations.

WAKING

I scribble some notes and recall the previous dream. Fights and confrontations in dreams are also quite common where strong emotions like anger tend to flare up. Being pursued by the police is also an extremely unlikely situation accompanied by feeling terrified of being captured. Each dream seems to come with at least one scene shift and there are some long-term memory-based elements such as Musaddique—a friend I have not seen since secondary school. I also need to practice being more critical of suspicious events such as Musaddique not knowing exactly which house door is his.

Date: 23/04/2022
Bedtime: 3.30am
Awakening: 8.45am
Return to bed: 9am
Method of entry: dream consciousness
Attempt: successful
Awakening: 12pm
DILD: The Microscope Experiment


DREAMING

I'm in a nightclub and feel like going for a pee so I walk towards a public toilet. As I head for the urinal, I sense that I'm being followed at close proximity by a lanky Oriental guy. This individual declares himself to be gay and begs me for sex. When I decline, he tells me he can't be held responsible for what might happen when I undo my trousers to urinate. Shocked and feeling a bit freaked out, I exit the toilet and decide to report him to the bouncers, but once I hear these burly men discussing how they've manhandled a few homophobes out of the nightclub, I feel apprehensive. What if they take me to be homophobic once I tell them about the man who solicited me for sex in the toilet?


WAKING

I dash off what I remember from dreaming, making a note of how extremely unlikely the nightclub situation would have been in real life and the strong emotions about it. I also realise the uncritical assumption I made in believing that I would be thought of as homophobic for spurning a gay pervert. In real life, should such a scenario present itself, I'd like to think I would be astute enough to explain myself with the clarity that calling out inappropriate behaviour does not make me a bigot. I use the loo and return to bed a few minutes later with the initial intention to enter the phase indirectly. I fall asleep with the experiment in mind.


DREAMING

I'm an onlooker at a nocturnal rodeo and I witness a man getting knocked out by a thuggish cowboy. The moustachioed father of the unconscious victim rushes to the scene in a fit of rage and attempts to hit his son's aggressor, but a group of people restrain him. Then, in an exasperating turn of events, the thug and his cronies beat up the father. On top of this, the police arrive to unjustly arrest the crying and bruised old man despite the fact that he and his son were the ones who were brutally assaulted. The sun comes up as the cops force the cuffed victim into a police car. Is this really happening? I gradually pull my right sleeve up to check my tattoo—it looks accurate at first glance, but then I turn my forearm slightly when I notice a curious addition: an ink depiction of the Virgin Mary's countenance which contradicts what is true in real life. I'm dreaming!


LUCID DREAMING

I'm standing next to a stable and the rodeo crowd is no longer present. In fact, not a soul in sight, as it were. Before me is a vivid, rural landscape at the crack of dawn. (Realism: 100%) I bring the palms of my hands to about six inches from my face and start peering at the creases, imagining that my eyes are microscope lenses. My skin turns into a beige canvas, so to speak, which comes to dominate my field of vision and, as I zoom in, its creases begin to resemble gorges enabling the flow of peculiar sperm-like swimmers of a dark pigmentation. I no longer feel like I'm looking at my hands, having acquired a bird's-eye view of a weird but captivating landscape—a world which isn't the cellular topography I initially expected. I'm eerily drawn to the craggy terrain below, which becomes increasingly defined with my approach. The bizarre sperm-like creatures turn out to be squid-shaped machines similar to the Sentinels in The Matrix, gliding through canyons in a vast desert.

As soon as I land on rocky terrain, the sky quickly darkens, turning overcast in a matter of seconds. A few mechanical squids fly above me and I take off to give chase over a mountainous grey landscape. I see someone walking alongside a precipice and decide to allay my curiosity by landing next to the character in order to strike up a conversation. Upon closer examination, I see Gerald, my best man! 'What are you doing here?' I ask. 'Let me show you something!' He replies enthusiastically. I follow him as he walks ahead visibly excited. The surroundings begin to resemble Richmond—where my in-laws used to live—and a conversation between me and Gerald becomes defocused; I fall asleep.


DREAMING

I'm walking down Manor Road and my best man is apparently taking me to his house. We arrive at his outdoor dwelling—where he literally doesn't have a roof over his head and I don't think to question it—and all his furniture and possessions are exposed to the elements. He shows me shelves stacking books, CDs and DVDs. I spot The Matrix collection: 'Have you seen all of them, Gel?' I ask. 'All of 'em!' He replies. He appears to have exactly the same interests as me! I see Black Sabbath records and his stereo is playing 'Whole Lotta Love' by Led Zeppelin. I don't remember him being into good old classic metal music.

We go for a walk again and come upon the bottom of a cliff with a rusty ladder extending all the way to the top. Gerald begins to climb the ladder and I follow, finding the situation extremely precarious. Once he reaches the top, he stands in my way of climbing up from the ladder, making me hold on to it for dear life. Experiencing extreme vertigo and trying not to panic, I try to see what's taking him so long to move out of the way; I even think about asking him for help. I am now paralysed with fear, observing Gerald with his back to me, lifting a grate from the dusty ground for some unknown reason. Scene shift: A man dressed in rags is accused of being abusive on the streets of what looks like the fictitious Walford in EastEnders. Actor Brian Conley, who plays Tom Cotton, defends the poor man, believing him to be the victim of defamation. Another citizen thinks the raggedy man is guilty and Brian Conley becomes annoyed. I'm inclined to side with the celebrity, pointing out that the accusations are just hearsay and that there is an absence of evidence against the accused. I subsequently urge bystanders to give the raggedy man the benefit of the doubt and listen to his version of events before jumping to conclusions. The unkempt man begins to speak.


WAKING

I record my lucid dream and make note of the potential and recurring oneiric cues which can be exploited in the future to promote dream consciousness. Curiously, this is the second time I experience vertigo in a dream so it could be the beginning of a dream pattern. Fights/confrontations, pursuits and celebrity meetings are recurring themes.

Date: 25/03/2022
Bedtime: 4am
Awakening: 7am
Return to bed: 7.30am
Method of entry: dream consciousness
Attempt: successful
Awakening: 12pm
Phase experience: The Full Stomach Experiment

DREAM STATE

Taking Daisy (my former neighbour's daughter) to school. We are both on bicycles but suddenly I am on a skateboard without wheels and struggle to keep up with her in a playground full of grassy knolls, sand dunes and rough terrain in general. I pick up the skateboard and run after the girl, fearing I might lose her as she goes into a train station and down a flight of stairs leading to a platform on foot (her bicycle disappears). A tanned commuter is coming down the steps right behind me and speaks to me but I can't remember what was said. Daisy finally halts and speaks to the stranger briefly as though he's familiar.

Me, my wife, our kids and my mother get inside a black vintage Citroen and ride to the city for sightseeing and perhaps do some shopping. My mum is driving (she doesn't own this type of car in real life) and turns on the radio, causing Limp Bizkit's song 'Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)' to blast from the speakers. We all start singing along to the chorus and swaying to the rap-rock beat, but I soon find myself unable to sing properly as my voice becomes muffled.

Me and my wife take turns in playing a virtual reality game where we have to control a space probe and make it crash on a particular planet of our choice. I'm trying to avoid the red planet Mars and then aim for Jupiter in a bid to make the spacecraft enter its Great Red Spot. I enter the Jovian atmosphere by heading for the stormy bullseye which grows in size to become a gigantic, warm-coloured cyclone. The centre of the storm is like a peaceful vortex and soon it is just me descending into the cloudy funnel like a solitary astronaut. The deeper I go, the less realistic the atmospheric surroundings become and the more I feel like I'm traveling through a simulated tunnel, the end of which is dark and the swirling patterns leading to it increasingly display white tendrils and blue wisps among the dominant fiery colours. Soon, my hands touch the whirling clouds, leading to my death in the game and suddenly I'm no longer a participant as I find myself looking at a screaming avatar on a screen, perishing in Jupiter's storm with a red caption that reads 'Game Over' and I laugh it off with my wife.

WAKING STATE

I wake up to the sound of my alarm and make sure the kids get up for school. I feel quite tired after experiencing a bout of insomnia and return to bed having used the loo with no intention to enter the phase state. I fall asleep almost immediately.

DREAM STATE

Me and my family decorate and change the layout of the living room, which looks different. There is a lot going on: walls being painted, furniture being moved and oddly, cement being applied to the floor. My wife, my mother and my oldest sister (estranged in waking life) block me into a corner of the room with a sofa and decide to go shopping. I can't move but I am busy doing something where I am. My youngest son Alfie is about to enter the room and I tell him to stop as it is a hazardous environment. He reaches for the light switch and I start panicking, thinking he might get an electric shock. Then, I notice the switch has been cemented over but don't find it odd—instead I tell my son, 'Alfie, you can't turn the light on because mum's gone over the switch with cement!' He teases me about threatening to touch it with his finger and I get slightly annoyed.

Scene shift: Me, my wife, my mum, my sister and someone else are walking together outdoors on a pavement when I notice a social contradiction—me and my estranged sister haven't spoken in years and yet she is walking next to me! Am I dreaming? I check my right arm tattoo to find the simplistic picture of a woman resembling the Virgin Mary instead of a dagger going through a skull with a ribbon displaying my wife and kids' names spiralling around them as is the case in real life. I rub the erroneous tattoo with one finger to see if I can smudge it and find that it looks surprisingly permanent, but at this point I already have enough evidence to convince me that the world around me is an illusion. 'I'm definitely dreaming!'

PHASE STATE

I look at my oneiric, make-believe family members and none of them look right. Their faces are strange and somewhat vacant. The fourth person is a complete stranger and all of them stand before me like slightly animated mannequins. I laugh and tell them they look fake. To the one resembling my sister I say: 'What the hell are you doing here?' and to the strange bald and chubby Latino man, 'And who the hell are you?' I deliberately pick a fight with the random with the intent to practise martial arts. We fight over and around stationary vehicles and he's giving me the right resistance: good at sparring and blocking! Feeling satisfied with the training, I fly away and pass through the wall of a house nearby to encounter an interior similar to my living room in the real world. As I explore the environment, it takes me a few seconds to recall my plan of action, and I remember the experiment of 'eating to feel full' as I go through the ceiling, which feels treacly around my torso. Half way up the loft, I think of ceiling as edible and find that the wooden floor near my mouth tastes like crispy, condensed candyfloss. I continue to pull myself upwards as I chew part of the floor above the ceiling.

I find a metal tube akin to an elongated thermos flask on the floor of the loft and start pulling proper pink candyfloss out of it, immediately stuffing my face with the woolly edible. I spot a bed in the middle of the loft and sit on it, continuing to eat lots of candyfloss from the long, metallic flask—amounts that I would not be able to cope with in waking life. At this point, I treat the source of the fluffy, sugary substance as capable of providing limitlessly—a magical bottomless pit! I jump to the middle of the bed to crouch as I swallow as much candyfloss as I can in fast succession. My knees come to rest on the mattress as I gobble up what's on my left hand whist pulling more candyfloss out of the flask with my right hand. As I stuff my face, I notice two freestanding, full-length mirrors—one in front of me about three feet away from the bed, and the other to my left; but none of them display my reflection initially, they only appear to convincingly reflect the loft environment without my presence.

I wish to see myself eating, so I look at the flask for a moment then back at mirrors—according to the frontal and profile reflections, I am a huge, bald, chubby and cute baby greedily eating a lot of candyfloss. My reflections' movements match my own, giving me the impression that I have really turned into an oversized baby. The profile reflection begins to reveal blonde tufts of hair on an enlarged head. I gaze at the frontal reflection as I continue to munch and, as I savour the fluffy sugar, I tell the baby I see: 'You look ridiculous!' I start wondering what the reflection would look like if it got mad at me. The baby inside the mirror continues to mimic my movements but morphs into a frowning Gollum-like creature, gradually becoming slender and his tufts of hair grow longer and darker. I've been chomping on limitless candyfloss since I arrived in this loft and I still don't feel full. I would be feeling sick by now if I had consumed this much candyfloss in the real world! Try as I might, I cannot reach that feeling of being stuffed. It's not normal.

WAKING STATE

I wake up on an empty stomach and don't feel full in the real world either. I feel no different. I jot down my sleep experiences and go about my day.

Date: 17/03/2022
Bedtime: 2.30am
Awakening: 7.40am
Return to bed: 8am
Method of entry: dream consciousness
Attempt: successful
Awakening: 10am
DILD: The Body Check Experiment

DREAMING

At a shopping centre, me and a number of people are trying to evade and hide from a pride of lions. I experience intense fear as the big cats seem to be all over the place and almost impossible to avoid. We start climbing decorated walls in order to reach large shelves as the environment starts to resemble a museum interior. It's only a matter of time before someone dies in front of me. We reach a high shelf but a poor woman on its edge is pulled and devoured by a giant feline beast. I am terrified as I find this situation to be an absolute nightmare.

WAKING

I record the nightmare and make sure the kids get ready for school before using the loo. I return to bed and put my sleep mask on with the intension to enter the phase directly. I experience some fleeting hypnagogic imagery but eventually have to move from a supine to a side position and uncover myself as my body temperature rises to an uncomfortable level. I fall asleep.

DREAMING

I'm part of the Mafia and my gangster pals are with me at a hideout. We are listening to our butler who is trying to give us good advice about evading our enemies and doesn't seem to stop talking. He is a grey gentleman with a very English accent. Somehow, the old man ends up getting shot by an enemy so we carry him and flee the hideout before getting in a mini and driving off. Covered in blood and not looking good, the butler is dying in the backseat of the car. We need to get away and bury the body somewhere.

HYPNOPOMPIA

Scene shift: I'm lying in bed experiencing hissing in my head with accompanying hypnopompic imagery that seems to last a couple of minutes before I lose consciousness.

DREAMING

I'm in the backseat of a speeding car with my wife. The situation is a hot pursuit where the gangsters are driving away from their rivals. I tell them to be careful as they nearly crash into a truck and reassure Stacey that everything will be alright. It dawns on me that the situation is extremely unusual and I ask, 'Am I dreaming?'

LUCID DREAMING

My wife is still panicking next to me about the precarious driving and I grab her hand and tell her that she should no longer worry because it is all a dream. (Realism: 90%) I open the car door and I'm ready to jump out but I'm suddenly back in bed with a pulsating hiss in my head.

The experience is fully tactile. (Realism: 15%) Suddenly, my legs begin to float and fall on what feels like my sleeping wife lying next to me. My body rests on the bed only from the waist up and I find this odd. I decide the experience cannot be real and push against the phantom bed, causing me to start hovering over it. A dimly lit bedroom environment comes into view. (Realism: 65%) As I float 5ft above the bed, I can see my sleeping wife on her side and next to her the hint of a second body completely covered and lying dormant. I'm having an out-of-body experience.

I remember Project Elijah's task and begin palpating my body all over and counting fifteen seconds in my head. This causes the environment to become sharper immediately. (Realism: 95%) As I rub my arms, I land next to the bed with my bare feet on a highly defined carpeted floor. With one hand I part the curtains to bring more light into the room while the other hand rubs my neck and head. (Realism: 100%) The bedroom door is open and I'm about to exit into the hallway but my sleeping wife kicks me in the real world and I wake up.

WAKING

I realise I can't re-enter the dream world because time is getting on and I must get up for other commitments. I'm a bit annoyed with myself because I had said to myself a few days ago that the next time I tried to induce a lucid dream after waking in the morning, I would return to a different bed to prevent being disturbed during the experience. As a result of neglecting that preparation, I didn't get to fulfill what would have been the next step after the task: to time-travel to the future (subconscious futuristic concept for artistic purposes).

Date: 18/03/2022
Bedtime: 3.30am
Awakening: 8am
Return to bed: 8.05am
Method of entry: dream consciousness
Attempt: successful
Awakening: 11.15am
DILD: Time Travel

DREAMING

The environment is fraught with food stalls and cakes galore. The marketplace is packed with people and there are a few excited children running around. I'm eating a delicious slice of sponge cake with blue icing sugar on top. I search for more slices of cake with my mum but all we find is half-eaten ones with no icing.

I'm racing with Danny Dyer, Richard Blackwood and others along a train station platform. I'm a great runner and it is a draw with Danny Dyer after we beat everyone else. I tell Richard about my waking life memory of winning the dads' race at my kids' primary school once. He replies, 'That's right, I remember!' like he had been there (no celebrity attended that particular school sports day as far as I know). There is another race taking place with some participants who are partially naked. A little Halle Berry lookalike jumps on me like a crazed fan and wraps herself around my torso as I run. She weighs nothing apart from feeling her grip and I start to show off by running even faster whilst carrying a person.

Scene shift: On the opposite platform, the race is over but Halle Berry lookalike won't let go of me. A long-haired guy wearing a dark trenchcoat challenges me to compare the size of our private parts; we are about to expose ourselves at the same time to everybody until at the last minute he aborts by making a joke of it with a gesture and we both laugh it off having avoided considerable embarrassment despite our initial bravado. I tell little Halle that we need to part ways and she becomes visibly upset. I start flying away from her as I hear her sobbing and move speedily over the railway and through a tunnel; the flying, as far as I'm concerned, is completely natural for a race champion to do. Once I reach the end of the tunnel I come upon an urban setting. I still hear the woman crying and feel extremely sorry for her so I wish to see her face one last time for another goodbye. Suddenly, a green hologram resembling her face comes floating out of the tunnel before disappearing. 'I'm dreaming!'

LUCID DREAMING

I fly over the hustle and bustle of the city under a daytime atmosphere, gradually gaining altitude, viewing rooftops and soon going beyond the urban confines to a more idyllically rustic landscape composed of beautifully sun-kissed greenery and lakes. I remember my plan to find out what happens in a lucid dream if I wish to time-travel to the future, but instead of using a wormhole to get there as previously imagined during a dream incubation rehearsal in the waking state, I decide to close my eyes and spin in darkness to subsequently glide through the void which gradually fills with dim light.

I land on a hard floor made of several fluorescent hexagons which I explore with my hands and feet. I look up and it's nighttime in an urban environment illumed by a myriad multicoloured lights. It feels like a tourist zone reminiscent of Trafalgar Square in London, only somewhat richer. I'm approached by a hooded man who asks me, 'Where did you come from?' I reply, 'I'm a time traveller!' He laughs in my face and starts gathering others to surround and taunt me. I start forcing people to sit down, literally picking them up and collecting them at a bus station to form an audience that will hear me out. I lose lucidity ...

DREAMING

Some people from the crowd start to grab me but I am too strong to allow myself to be overwhelmed and in my determination, I jibber-jabber at the crowd of doubting Thomases until I turn into Ben Shapiro. I can literally hear my Shapiro voice explaining to them, like a motormouth, that I can prove I'm a time traveller. Managing to get enough space, I start spinning like a dervish until the urban dreamscape fades and I wake up.

WAKING

It seems that my dream incubation worked to a degree. A few days ago I had imagined a slightly different time-travelling narrative but I am glad that it was enough to recall the plan and the theme when I became lucid.

Date: 18/02/2022
Bedtime: 3am
Awakening: 10.40am
Return to bed: 10.50am
Method of entry: dream consciousness
Attempt: successful
Awakening: 12pm
DILD: The Amputation Experiment

DREAMING:

I'm roaming over a beach with a group of lucid dreaming enthusiasts and cross over to an adjacent train station platform, making for a weird landscape juxtaposition where the sea abruptly ends and a railway begins. Both contrasting sceneries are deemed to be 'lucid dreaming workshops' to be used for practice. The platform is sealed by ultramarine blinds on both ends which are lifted by porters whenever someone wants to enter or leave the premises. A couple of trains zoom past the station and beyond the sealed platform I am suddenly in a wheelchair, moving through a park with children running around and alongside a row of houses with dark alleys. A particular alley has a deep but narrow gap in the ground—a potential deathtrap reminding of the series '911' because of the danger scenarios depicted on the show.

WAKING:

I use record the dreaming experience and use the loo. I return to bed just before eleven o'clock in the morning and attempt to enter the phase directly but end up falling asleep next to my sleeping wife.

DREAMING:

I'm dining at a restaurant with my mother and she steps outside to smoke a cigarette (she doesn't smoke in real life). Eventually I say goodbye to her as I spot my eldest son and wife looking for me a few tables away and they exit the restaurant prematurely so I rush after them so we can all go home together. Now I'm an observer (rather than a participant) and a short man is facing me like I'm a camera and talking about how most people get freaked out by oversized hands. He attempts to shake hands with random members of the public like he is the star of a prank show. Most people avoid the little man's disproportionately big hands but an old man grips his wrist and points out that his fingers have skin-coloured extensions attached to them, revealing the hands to be a lot smaller.

As a participant, I'm trying to avoid an acquaintance who keeps following me in a strange town. I go through an alley and squeeze into an aperture of a building in need of repairs in order to lose the individual on my trail. I keep running straight until I exit the building from the other side and now I'm flying, finding myself gliding through a beautiful garden. 'I'm dreaming!'

LUCID DREAMING:

I glide through a garden path with brightly coloured, conifer leaves on either side, displaying unusually vivid orange and yellow hues. As I move through the garden I hit the narrow foliage with my hands and hear the realistic sound of clashing. There is no green in sight but I feel like I'm in the most beautiful autumn scenario as the warm colours of the plants and trees around me are exquisitely vibrant. The garden, under a clear blue sky, feels like a labyrinth. As I try to contain my excitement and think of a plan of action on the spot without hesitation, I remember Project Elijah's task. I see a gap in warm-coloured shrubbery with crimson tinges and go through it (hoping to find a blade), coming upon a vast playground with slides, swings, see-saws, spring riders and jungle gyms. A few feet away rests a wooden merry-go-round with a few tools on it.

The first tool I pick up is a pair of pliers which is discarded in favour of what resembles a small tenon saw with a bizarre blade that appears to be sharp enough for the job. With this strange tool I sever my right index finger with in one fell swoop. There is no pain, no feeling of any kind, and no blood. I look at my hand and see a stub of a finger with an edge that seems to have healed instantly; I can also move all my digits including the stub. Then, I look at the surface of the merry-go-round to see the rest of my index twitching slightly until it stops dead. I try to remotely move it on the wooden surface but I can't even feel it let alone control it. The severed half of my finger that is now completely separate from me won't even move telekinetically. It is nothing but a dead piece of meat that no longer belongs to me.

As I move away from the merry-go-round to explore the environment, I feel a jolt and wake up as my sleeping wife bumps into me.
Duration: 25 seconds

WAKING:

I jot down my dream recall and reflect on my fabulously unreal experience at the oneiric playground. I had absolutely no idea what would happen before the test and no expectations as far as I can tell. Next time I plan to induce a lucid dream, I must return to a separate bed so as to not be disturbed and that way I will have time to execute other steps in my plan of action.

Date: 22/01/2022
Bedtime: 3.30am
Awakening: 8am
Return to bed: 8.05am
Method of entry: deferred direct
Attempt: successful
Awakening: 9am
Phase experience: The Pill Experiment
Duration: 35 seconds

DREAM STATE

Me and my wife have moved to Albania and we walk down an alley with rows of doors and windows. There is barely any space between them and we comment on cramped residents must feel living there. We reach our new home, which feels like it is at the end of a dark tunnel next to a dead end. Our landlord is an apron-wearing Albanian woman in her 30s with a strong accent and she takes us upstairs to show us around. When she turns we get an eye full of nakedness—her back and buttocks are exposed. I wake up.

WAKING STATE

I get up to use the loo and return to bed after a few minutes in order to induce a WILD and execute Project Elijah's experiment.

PHASE STATE

After a period of relaxation and imagining impossible movements whilst lying down, my legs soon bend and sink into the bed, which is conspicuously impossible. I aggressively get up and look around. It's dark and I can barely make out the bed. I start touching the mattress and the bedframe and shout, 'Clarity! Clarity!' expecting vision to improve, which at this point can be described as a bright background obscured by dark patches.

I start spinning in a bid to get rid of them and when I stop, I find myself standing at the bottom of a strange staircase in an unfamiliar environment. The dominant green walls remind me of The Matrix: Resurrections which I saw with my son at the cinema on his birthday. I rush up the stairs, going up in a spiral, listening to my footsteps and describing the surroundings and my actions out loud, noticing that my voice is muffled.

I reach an open window and climb on the ledge in order to jump and fly away to a vast blue sky but then I recall Project Elijah's task; I look down and realise I'm wearing grey pyjamas with pockets so I reach inside one of them and feel two pills. I grip one and it appears to be elongated, which I subsequently discard because it differs greatly from the NZT pill in the film Limitless. I grip the other one and pull it out of my pocket without seeing what it looks like but it's round to the touch so that's good enough for me.

When I swallow the pill—expecting to experience superconsciousness—I briefly acquire the secondary perspective of observing myself from a few feet away squatting on the window ledge with my head tilted back and gulping; subsequently, I'm back in my squatting body staring at a blue sky being consumed by a multicoloured cloud of pixels that ends up taking over my field of vision. The effect is over in a few seconds before everything fades and I foul.

No superconsciousness was experienced and what had followed the act of swallowing the pill had been purely visual.

Date: 14/12/2021
Bedtime: 8pm
Awakening: 12.10am
Return to bed: 3.15am
Method of entry: dream consciousness
Awakening: 7.05am
Attempt: successful
Phase experience: The Pinch Experiment
Duration: 45 seconds

DREAM STATE

I'm enjoying dancing with strangers at a party in a strange house. Adjacent to the dance floor, there is a kitchen where something is cooking and a staircase. Me and my wife explore upstairs and are delighted to meet a prominent figure in the world of political activism. 'It's John Foucault!' I say to my wife, not realising that in waking life the name is Michel Foucault, who died decades ago and was not a slender black man constantly surrounded by acolytes. Suddenly, a rabble of angry Foucault opponents break into the property and the flight of stairs between us and the incoming threat is barricaded. Just as I think there is no way out, we are ushered to an open window and manage to escape danger. I am now walking by myself through Crane Park and find this continuity incongruous with the events that preceded it. The trees and herbage enfold the footpath in a peculiar way and the stream characteristic of Crane Park is nowhere to be found. I recognise that I am dreaming.

PHASE STATE

The environment is not necessarily more colourful upon my lucid realisation, but the landscape is certainly highly defined under a bright blue sky and the ground increases in realism when I scoop up rocks and sand with my hands. (Realism: 100%) Almost immediately, I recall the pinch experiment and look for my wife who had been with me prior to my lucidity. Gliding through the dirt track towards where the party house from the precedent dream might be found, I bring tactility and sound to life by churning up the soil with my hands. It feels like I'm on an invisible skateboard, playfully scarring the dirt track as I go, until I realise there are no houses ahead, so I decide to slow down and check behind a bush for my wife. 'Stacey?' She remains absent and all I see is twigs and leaves. Back on the dirt track, gliding through it at appreciable speed in the opposite direction and causing stones to collide and spark as a result, I see a perpendicular road ahead and take a right at the end of the park.

I access the nearest house, expecting to find wife there. Approaching the cottage-like structure, I see that its front door is already wide open and run into it; inside, I find myself in a waking-life bathroom replica, where Stacey's doppelgänger is perched on the sink. 'Alright, babe?' she says. 'Let me see your shoulder!' I reply, wasting no time as I roll up her short sleeve. I pinch my pseudo-wife as hard as I can on the right shoulder and, even though she remains indifferent, I worry that somehow I might be hurting my wife in the real world. 'It's okay,' the doppelgänger says, 'It doesn't hurt.' I make sure the pinch is strong enough that it would surely bruise someone if it were performed in waking life, simultaneously hoping that I won't find a bruised wife upon awakening. My curiosity about what is happening in the real world probably causes me to foul. I wake up.

WAKING STATE

I record the experience and check my wife's shoulder, explaining to her what the Project Elijah task entailed. She reveals that she is not bruised, confirming that actions in the phase state cannot have a direct effect on the external world. I suddenly remember, however, that Stacey has a booked appointment for a Covid-19 booster later. When I ask her which arm she prefers to have the vaccine injected in, she coincidentally says the right one.

Date: 20/11/2021
Bedtime: 1.30am
Awakening: 8.45am
Return to bed: 9am
Method of entry: deferred direct
Awakening: 10.30am
Attempt: successful
Phase experience: The Mona Lisa Experiment
Duration: 50 seconds

WAKING STATE

I wake up to feed my mum's Yorkshire terriers and leave them to play in the back garden before returning to bed to try the direct method of entering the phase state. Because I feel tired, it is easy to relax on my back—which is not my usual position to fall asleep in but ideal for reaching hypnagogia under the circumstances. Before long, a series of fleeting images manifests until a perceived lapse of consciousness.

PHASE STATE

I become aware of standing in a living-room replica, realistically surrounded by Christmas decorations, and remember to look for the Mona Lisa portrait for Project Elijah. I go through the back door like a ghost in order to access the garden where I believe Mona Lisa is to be found. What I find, instead, is what appears to be a basketball court with some characters milling about and no Leonardo da Vinci painting in sight; however, the surroundings brick walls display colourful graffiti. I focus on a particular wall replete with complex art and fail to detect anything that resembles a portrait—and even after looking away and back at the surface to summon the Renaissance picture, hardly anything changes. I carefully move along the wall in order to examine it carefully and come to a central square about the size of an A2 canvas containing geometric shapes; as I tilt my head, I begin to make pictorial sense of it—the image depicts a vehicle headed downhill and appears to be partially cropped by a shrugging cartoon character that can be best described as a clueless bald man pouting.

I return to the house expecting Mona Lisa to be present in the living room but I encounter an altered interior dominated by more graffiti. I ascend from the floor and pass through the white ceiling with plans to access an imagined upper level containing da Vinci's masterpiece but find myself floating in darkness instead. Due to a cold, I begin to hear my laboured breathing and snoring in my sleep, which immediately strikes me as paradoxical because I am awake and hovering in a dark, phantom space. I'm losing depth of perception so I start rubbing my hands and notice the sound it produces getting louder. I also slowly spin in the void in order to create a vestibular sense and preclude sensations of lying in bed. A vertical column of white light emerges a few feet away and appears to moderately define a sombre bedroom environment in which I perceive myself to be facing partially drawn curtains.

An edgy man in black resembling the actor Dennis Haysbert (who plays the troubled President David Palmer in the TV series 24) is restlessly pacing up and down next to the bed and mumbling incoherently. My judgement is askew here: even though I take the man in black to be a hallucination, I believe I can get a head start in recording my sleep experiences by rushing to my bedside cabinet to get a pen and a piece of paper. As I sit on the bed, and before I can open the drawer, the neurotic man in black approaches and sighs exasperatedly. Surmising this figure to be a frustrated aspect of myself, I hold his hand and invite him to take a seat and relax. 'I can help you!' I say as I take both of his hands. The man squats down in front of me and sardonically replies, 'Really?!' I get the impression that he has no faith in me when he gives me a wry smile. Suddenly, he grips my hands and his countenance takes a devious turn; dreadful, malevolent eyes leer at me—his physiognomy now similar to Tony Todd's when he played the demonic Candyman back in the '90s.

As I try to break free from the grapple, he cocks his head to the side to reveal an extra almond eye on his cheekbone. I assess the situation in Jungian terms and regard the aggressor as possibly representing a shadowy aspect of myself which I have perhaps been denying on some unconscious level and now an opportunity presents itself to potentially address my dark side, as it were. This view, however, doesn't allay my fear in the slightest and wrestling with this figure is proving too much to handle. 'You need to be gone!' I shout as I shake the shadowy monster off me, making it magically vanish in an engulfing dark background. Now I feel a presence behind me and an arm wraps itself around my torso. I want to believe that I'm perceiving my wife cuddling me in the real world as I am still shaken by the unpleasant encounter with the man in black. I briefly wake up and my sleeping wife has her arm around me as suspected and wished for. I can hear the dogs barking in the back garden, making me a little annoyed with the noise they are making in the neighborhood. I'm tired and fall asleep.

DREAM STATE

I am at a crowded Canning Town train station in East London. As I walk around, the surroundings morph into a Tate Modern gallery displaying exquisite metal sculptures and Bauhaus images in mostly black, white and blue (a lot less colourful than the graffiti art I'd seen earlier). There is a frustration in me as I'm not quite sure what I am looking for but I know it is not what I see. I exit what appears to now be Twickenham Stadium and my wife and children—who are a lot younger and smaller than they ought to be—happen to be with me. Suddenly, a heavyset Asian man appears to have been kicked out of the stadium and does not look happy. In his irascible state, he cursed at a group of men in high vis vests and I move the kids to safety. A rottweiler, chained to a bollard, constantly barks and snaps at the enraged man who threatens to punch the animal. A couple of bystanders restrain him before he has a chance to hurt the dog but subsequently let him go when he appears to calm down. A crowd carefully observes him and he begins to feel like a potential terrorist. He picks a fight with the group of workers and the police turns up. I wake up to the sound of barking.

WAKING STATE

I reflect on my experiences and jot them down, noting that I could not find Mona Lisa in the phase state. In hindsight, the subsequent dream state reveals cues—such as absurd environmental changes and my kids being the wrong age—which I failed to recognise in order to promote consciousness of the true nature of its events. I do suspect the terrorist in the dream reflected my anger at the barking in the real world, which needs to be recognised and kept in check. Time to see to the dogs.

Date: 15/09/2021
Bedtime: 2.45am
Awakening: 7.15am
Return to bed: 9.15am
Method of entry: dream consciousness
Awakening: 11.30am
Attempt: successful
Phase experience: The Relative Experiment
Duration: 55 seconds

WAKING STATE

I return home from a school run with a strong intention to enter the phase state and carry out the experiment set by Project Elijah. I feel too awake when I lie down on my back so I decide to relax and meditate.

PHASE STATE

I am resting on my side with my eyes shut and hear a male 'radio' voice in my head. It's reassuring me that together we can overcome any problems and ended with, 'Don't worry, I'm always here if you need me ... I've got your back.' I feel like I have discovered a strong ally from my subconscious and take the voice seriously enough as a possible helper that I might wish to summon in the future. As I remain still, pondering about the nature of my own mind, I fall asleep.

DREAM STATE

Me and my wife are in the back of a red convertible, speeding down a motorway under sunny weather and facing the rear end of the vehicle as we watch a long stretch of road from our backseats. Our chauffeur, who seems to be a good driver, is unknown. Suddenly, I notice a naked man holding on to the side of the car. I leap in his direction and, fearing he might be trying to hijack our ride, attempt to kick him off it. The nude character proves to be quite agile and swiftly jumps to the bonnet and holds on for dear life. I begin to cautiously approach the miscreant in the hope that I might be able to strike him but this one moves to the driver's side. He holds on to the side mirror and struggles with the driver; wasting no time, I come to the rescue, managing to push him off the vehicle as it grinds to a halt with sirens growing louder.

The police is right behind us and the naked outlaw makes a dash for a barn on the side of the road in order to hide. 'There he is!' I yell at the cops as I give chase so as to not lose sight of the fugitive. I enter the barn and glimpse him escaping through a gap in the next splintered wall. Rushing to the gap, I break loose planks of wood in order to widen it and become astonished at the rustic vista beyond as I practically stand on the edge of a gully. 'Where did he go?' I look down and see a river shimmering in the sunlight. 'Am I dreaming?'

PHASE STATE

I plunge into the river from a great height without any regard for safety as I know I'm dreaming. The water feels just right. When I resurface and begin to swim along the steep riverbank, I notice that the scenery has turned into a vibrant, picturesque village. The riverbank is now a row of buildings and I leap out of the water to grip the plastic sill of a third-floor window, climbing upwards and turning my head to behold the rest of my surroundings and knowing that I am supposed to do something for Project Elijah. That's it! This is my opportunity to encounter my deceased mother-in-law Sandra and communicate with her for 'The Relative Experiment'. I glide away from the windowsill as I make out a building that stands out from the rest: it's an impressive black silo, clearly cylindrical and wide enough to remind me of a giant bin, but majestically adorned with gold-plated lines and a cross. The entrance is guarded by the figure of a black man wearing a cassock and I immediately take the structure to be a church.

'That's where I'll find Sandra! She's inside the church!' I go over the priest's head and fly all the way to the top of the silo, revealing it to be open and offering me direct access to its interior. I gradually descend to find myself landing between rows of pews and an altar, next to which is an open coffin. I hear the unmistakable coughing of my mother-in-law and witness her figure sit up from the ebony casket. Despite her strikingly realistic form, I am not scared even if a part of me emotionally entertains the possibility that I might be in the presence of Sandra's spirit. In fact, I want it to be her, but I also want to know exactly what I'm dealing with here. She looks and sounds so real! Her trim silver hair, her facial features and her familiar voice are on the money! She is well groomed, sporting a silky blue shirt and her frame is strong and healthy—contrasting her gaunt appearance in her final days. She seems distressed as she coughs and appears to be clearing her throat. When she is done, she looks up and bursts into tears before we have an emotional cuddle and sit next to each other by the altar to engage in the following conversation containing the questions I had planned beforehand ...

Sandra: 'What took you so long?'
Me: 'I'm here! How can I make Stacey happier?'
Sandra: 'Look after my girl!'
Me: 'I will, no worries. So ... What is your afterlife like?'
Sandra: (Cheerfully) 'Oooh, I've been to the moon! I've been to marvelous places! I can go anywhere! I've got mushrooms ...'
Me: (excitedly thinking of magic mushrooms and that Sandra might show me what she experienced via psychedelics) 'What? Let's take them!'
Sandra: 'Come, come!'

She gets up and takes my hand, leading me towards a doorway revealing another room with a few people gathering around a banquet characterised by a lot of fruit. Before I can enter the room with Sandra, I wake up unexpectedly.

WAKING STATE

I dash off key observations about my lucid dream and reflect on the experience. It is not the first time I meet Sandra, or deceased loved ones for that matter, in the phase state, but it is always an intense and emotional experience. Seeing and talking to them fills me with joy and I always act as though it is really them. Deep down, I want such figures to really be them and not mere products of my mind.

In hindsight, Sandra answered my first question regarding my wife as I imagine she would. Undoubtedly, my mother-in-law would want me to look after her daughter in her absence from the realm of the living. To the second question, Sandra replied in a manner giving a strong impression that I was really engaged in a dialogue with myself. I didn't realise it at the time, but, retrospectively, the fact that my mother-in-law said she had been to the moon coincides with my original plan to meet her, which was, 'Fly to the moon and find Sandra there.' And affirming her ability to go to marvelous places and anywhere she wants parallels my attitude to lucid dreaming and its possibilities.

The very first thing Sandra said to me in this experience, which was ask what took me so long to meet her, can tellingly reflect my internal dialogue after finally manifesting the conditions in which to execute this experiment. The mention of 'mushrooms'—which I instantly took to be the fungal growths containing psilocybin—in the reply to the afterlife question also seems out of character for the real Sandra and more pertinent to my own experience with psychedelics in my twenties. I often imagine deathbed visions to be akin to psychedelic trips brought about by the release of endorphins!

Nevertheless, there is a desire to believe that such experiences are encounters with the spirits of loved ones who passed away. Deep down, with all the emotions that this experience brought forth, I reluctantly refuse to dismiss, altogether, a scenario where I have communed with the real Sandra—who had access to personal memories of experimenting with magic mushrooms and used it to convey to me what her afterlife has been like—however improbable it is.