Waking Up to Power of Lucid Dreaming

The letter arrived in a white, business-size envelope, typewritten, with my name spelled right.

“Dear Mind Explorer,” it starts.

Still, I figured they meant me.

So I read on, and it’s a darn good thing I did, too, because it turned out that my reading this letter, and the helpful brochure, and the enclosed news clipping, and the handy mail-back coupon whereby I could elect to contribute from $25 to $5,000, was important to THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY.

Which gave me pause.

I mean, just think. I could have cavalierly thrown it all in the trash only to spend the rest of my days wracked with guilt over the way humanity has been shaping up lately.

War, gang violence, the S&L; debacle, Gary’s death on “thirtysomething.” Do I want any of that on my conscience?

No, I do not.

I decided to do my part, especially since “work for the good of humanity” has always been high on my list of New Year’s resolutions. Right behind “try to floss regularly.”

So I glanced at the bottom of the letter, where I saw that Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D., Director of Research, The Lucidity Institute, was sending me “all best wishes.”

“In my investigations of higher states of consciousness,” he writes, “I discovered a little known, but extraordinarily powerful state: lucid dreaming. . . .

“From my scientific work at Stanford University, and my own personal experiences, I have become convinced that lucid dreaming has great potential to benefit humanity. . . . The future of lucid dreaming relies on the support of far-seeing people like you.”

Right then, I wanted to know how I could help. Short of electing to contribute from $25 to $5,000, that is.

So I got Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D., on the phone, all the way from The Lucidity Institute, which is not exactly affiliated with Stanford University, per se , or located on campus, in a physical sense , but “nearby.”

Given the transcendental importance of his sales pitch, I got right to the point.

“How can this help the future of humanity?” I asked.

And that’s when Stephen La Berge, Ph.D., started to get technical on me, talking about things like defining terms, and starting from the beginning, and giving me an idea of exactly what he was talking about.

Which is when I suspected that maybe Steph was considering a run for elected office.

“Lucid dreaming is dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming,” he said. Then he gave me an example from his trove of “own personal experiences.”

Turns out that the other night, Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D., found himself getting up from bed, walking into the bathroom and looking at a wall where a mirror used to be.

“How can this mirror be missing?” he asked himself. So just to prove to himself that, indeed, that mirror could not be missing, he started to fly.

“It’s all rather hard to believe, isn’t it?” he said, to which I responded something that escapes me at the moment, to which Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D., further explained that he was, in fact, just dreaming about the missing mirror, because of course we all know that humans cannot fly, which is why his trained mind interjected the flying business in the first place because if he had attempted to fly and fallen flat on his face, well, then he would have been awake.

To which I think I responded with a sort of humming noise.

Now let me add a note of caution here: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.

See, the sense I get is that Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D., is pretty advanced at this lucid dreaming stuff.

It’s been years , for example, since he’s had any use for the DreamLight, essentially a black sleep mask rigged with a white light that “reminds” the dreamer that he is dreaming. This way the dreamer is free to engage in dream-appropriate activities with little or no worry.

My feeling is the DreamLight, for example, has been instrumental in greatly reducing the number of people actually flying into the path of 747s over the busy Southland air corridor, not to mention winning the lottery or telling their bosses to take this job and shove it.

Plus, at $880 each--”the more we sell, the cheaper we can make it”--Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D., says he can’t afford a DreamLight.

But I sensed that we were getting off the subject.

“How can all this help humanity?” I asked Steph, doggedly.

And that’s when I suspect the director of research figured he might have to step down from his higher state of consciousness. He searched for another example outside his trove of own personal experiences.

“People discover things in their dreams,” he said. “There are many examples. Making that deliberate is what is possible in lucid dreaming. . . . In your lucid dream, you could ask a dream character, ‘Hey, you got any hot tips?’ ”

Which, of course, is when I really started having my doubts about lucid dreaming. Never, not even in my wildest dreams, would I ask somebody, “Hey, you got any hot tips?”

Why is it that anybody who is not a journalist thinks that people who are journalists walk around asking people, let alone dream characters , “Hey, you got any hot tips?”

The last time I think I heard that line was in college when a curiously pert party-goer cornered some sweet young thing with a notebook in her hands.

Beyond, “I think you should know that my father is the chancellor,” she didn’t have any hot tips.

But, hey, I don’t mean to dismiss all of this out of hand. For all I know, Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D., could be on to something. And I, for one, intend to give his step-by-step method for successful lucid dreaming--outlined in his latest book--a try.

Lord knows, tapping my heels together while chanting “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home” hasn’t been working too well for me lately.