Thread: Who invented WILD?

i have no idea but maybe wikipedia knows... wiki knows everything

Stephen Le Berge I believe

And would guess at late 80's

Originally Posted by Adam

Stephen Le Berge I believe

And would guess at late 80's

Not strictly true. LaBerge coined the term "WILD" in 1986, but I first read about the technique in early Castaneda books of the late 60s/early 70s. He called it "Becoming aware of falling asleep.." I would hazard a guess that's where LaBerge got it from.

Adam,

Are you 100% sure it was Dr. Stephen LaBerge? I heard of Castenada at some point.

It would great if you could do some research and confirm for me.

I did a search on the Internet but found nothing.

Thanks.

The term WILD was definitely coined by LaBerge. We have him to blame for "ILD" :-). It looks like he first used it in the 1986 book, "Lucid Dreaming".

It doesn't surprise me to hear that others came up with it earlier, though it's interesting that Casteneda had - I'd written him off as a useless fraud.

Dr. Stephen LaBerge it is then. Thanks.

Re-reading your question then it would be safe to say the concept itself was no La Berge but the term WILD was.

I invented Wild

I kid...

Tibetan Monks have been practicing sleep and dream yoga for millenium. A practitioner of these skills can apparently maintain awareness even during deep sleep. So while they might not call this phenomenon a WILD, I am sure they realized this possibility several 1000 years ago.

That beats Laberge.

All of those people in the past decade only expressed what's been known for thousands of years. Especially Tibetan Monks have been practicing this stuff for long before anyone ever thought about calling it "WILD". The technique of WILDing is long known to man, while the expression of it came up somewhen in the passed 50 years. Impossible to tell which single person invented it.

i know the question was "who invented WILD"... but i thought i would add a quote or two from an excellent resource book, Alternate Realities written by Leonard George, Ph.D. (1995) specifically from the lucid dreaming entry.

note, here i am only posting 2 sections, and not the whole entry, which spans 2 pages. if anyone is interested in it, i will see what i can do.

"Lucid dreams have been a topic of intense interest amount many non-western cultures. In modern times, lucid dreaming was first noted in 1913 by Van Eeden, who coined the term."

"For thousands of years, lucid dreams have been deliberately sought. The fourth century yoga Sutras of Patanjali recommended "witnessing the process of dreaming." Among the classical Tibetian meditation practices called the Six Yogas of Naropa are exercises for attaining realization in dreams. In the 12th century, the Sufi master Ibn el-Arabi taught that "a person must control his thoughts in a dream..." The Senoi of Malaysia have long prized lucid dream skills and teach them to their children for defense against nightmares."

for further reading lists, A. Faraday; C. Green; Laberge and Gackenback; Malamud; Van Eeden.

no way castaneda is useless fraud... his books make too much sense...

Originally Posted by alfy984

no way castaneda is useless fraud... his books make too much sense...

Personally I can't take him seriously. Two reasons that come to mind

1 - Widespread, coherent allegations that his stories, while presented as true, are both demonstrably false and inconsistent.

2 - I couldn't find an FAQ. You might say that's an arbitrary reason, but it speaks volumes to me. There _was_ an FAQ about dreaming, mentioned in a 1997 Usenet post, but the website is now down.

In essence, it's very difficult to find a coherent introduction to the combined works. I can understand that it may not be possible to summarize in any meaningful sense - but my understanding relies on the ability to bootstrap from nothing to a position of trust. "Read all nine books and make up your own mind" isn't a recipe for bootstrapping.

I value awareness, trancendence and I find the description of the seeker after truth as a warrior appealing. But I also like Ron Hubbard's idea that if you don't understand something, you can narrow it down to a single mis-understood word. That doesn't stop me from dismissing Scientology as a useless fraud. Things that make sense can be wrong, or dangerous, or sound insightful without actually saying anything...

I did. What now o.O

There have been accounts of WILDs throughout history.

Salvador Dali said that he put himself in a trance and surreal landscapes would appear.
The Oracles at Delphi went into trances and made prophecies from what they saw.
Lucid dreams have been common practice for Buddhist monks for many many years.