Thread: Lucid Dreaming Fundamentals -- With Q & A

Yes thanks I really appreciate your thoughts Sageous and fogelbise too - thanks! We do some memory stuff together and work with words etc and I along with a few friends have introduced this kind of thing to some other older members within our community also - we have began introducing Lucid dreaming basic's to her and them for some time - as they often get bad dreams and restless nights. We have had some success with getting calmer more peaceful sleeps not so much lucid dreams but getting them to feel the courage "to look the dream in the face" has significant results in terms of good nights sleep ( no nightmares ) which is great and I hope it will go on helping them after they cannot express it very well to us in words anymore ( this will happen if they live long with the disease ...to think they might have some tools to take with then wherever the disease takes them )

I also find this subject interesting as it makes me think about the Tibetan belief that if we gain lucidity in our dreams a lot during our life we have more chance of recognising we are in a " dream" when we die and realise the truth of all existence ...However ... Seeing the brain go to disease and how this impedes on lucidity makes me wonder how we will cope without our an actual " brain" when we die. As you probly know - They and many others believe when we " leave the body" at death it's like dreaming ...but I can't help but think there is a big difference - the brain is gone or switched off! When I think about this and how much effort it is even with our working memory and brain in tact while we are alive ( some anyway ) it makes me think how weak or somehow completely alien it will be to die - how can we make sure we have a fighting chance...? Can working on our lucidity really make a difference? I think it can but I don't know why I think it can in the face of what I mention here ,

Another curve ball - thanks and hope it can be called Fundementals - still your thoughts are most welcome

Originally Posted by Patience108

...They and many others believe when we " leave the body" at death it's like dreaming ...but I can't help but think there is a big difference - the brain is gone or switched off! When I think about this and how much effort it is even with our working memory and brain in tact while we are alive ( some anyway ) it makes me think how weak or somehow completely alien it will be to die - how can we make sure we have a fighting chance...? Can working on our lucidity really make a difference? I think it can but I don't know why I think it can in the face of what I mention here...

Well, in order for LD'ing -- of a fairly advanced variety -- to help you navigate the potential spiritual transitions of death, you must put on your Tibetan Yoga hat and take a leap of faith.

Yes, as far as we know, when your brain shuts down so do "You," period.

But what if there are things that go beyond "as far as we know," and there really is More, including the possibility that whatever it is that constitutes our consciousnesses, our souls, our selves, moves on to something new or maybe better? What if, like so many enjoy saying (without, of course, one wit of scientific evidence) our consciousness really does move on to another existence -- perhaps into a newborn child, perhaps on to something else altogether?

What if the process of this transition includes a complete erasure of everything that was "You" in this lifetime? And what if this transition occurs with no regard at all for the condition of your the brain from which your being is quietly stepping at death? All these what-ifs require a serious leap of faith to be accepted as possible, and that is the leap the Tibetan lamas take when they practice sleep yoga.

Sleep Yoga is essentially extremely advanced LD'ing, where the practitioner learns to be lucid throughout her entire sleep cycle, and to do so with an ease that makes the state of constant self-awareness second nature. The long-term plan is to have that skill -- that state of mind -- in place at the hour of death, so that a sleep yogi can hold onto her Self throughout the death transition, the bardo, and then have a conscious hand in where her soul continues on to after death... she can move on to a new body as already ordained by the Wheel of Life (whatever that means) or perhaps instead choose to jump off the Wheel and propel her soul/Self toward a higher existence.

But it all requires a leap of faith. A sleep yoga practitioner believes that they will be able to guide their Self through the bardo -- the space between the last life and the next -- and maintain their sense of self on to the next iteration of their physical being, thus breaking the chains of reincarnation and destiny. This belief rises above any proof they are shown about the limits of biology, or the cognitive damage a disease like Alzheimer's can cause. Indeed, this faith -- and the skills drawn from a lifetime of sleep yoga practice -- might just allow a practitioner to hold onto his Self throughout the bardo no matter what condition his brain was in at the time of death. So, if you believe, the physical condition of your brain is meaningless relative to the condition of your mind and soul at the time of death.

I'm sure I've made a shambles of millennia of Tibetan philosophy and mysticism with this incredibly brief and sloppy statement, but hopefully you get the point!

And here's a thing to think about: what is there to lose in practicing lucidity with sleep yoga-type long term goals? If it works, you're ahead of the game, and if it doesn't, well, you'll never know! Also, the practice has benefits in this life, so, even if death is final, there is value in it anyway.

I guess the tl;dr version of this is simply that the Tibetans believe that their state of mind will give them a fighting chance to move on, regardless of the state of their brains... and this sort of make sense, since all of our brains are in pretty poor shape just a few minutes after our hearts stop beating.