Customer Reviews

Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in lucid dreams. I've read nearly every book about lucid dreaming and I can say without hesitation this book is one of the best.

There are plenty of how-to books geared toward readers who seek to experience lucid dreams for the first time. While this book contains some techniques for that purpose, it offers so much more than that. Robert Waggoner takes lucid dreaming to a whole new level. Through his investigation of the profound inner awareness ever-present in our dreams, he demonstrates the vast potential for exploration and personal growth available to us lucid dreaming. This aspect of the book resonated deeply with me because it echoes my current approach to dreaming.

It is rare to find a book that approaches lucid dreaming from this angle, especially one that so thoroughly details the ways in which the dreamer can explore the hidden -- and often meaningful -- aspects of the dream. I wish this book had been around years ago when I first began my lucid dreaming practice.

Waggoner's enthusiasm for dreaming is evident on every page. Whether you are an experienced lucid dreamer or new to lucid dreaming, I recommend adding this to your personal library.

I've read my fair share of books about lucid dreaming and there are certainly better how-to books, but I'm glad that this isn't another how-to book. No other book on lucid dreaming has fascinated and inspired me as much as this one.

Before I read this book I just saw my lucid dreams as a playground where I could live out my fantasies. Now it's so much more than that. It feels like I've just started out on a great adventure into the unknown.

All the others that gave this book five stars have said it better than me, this really is a great book. This book has earned it's place in my lucid dreaming library, next to Stephen LaBerge's books. But if you're a beginner and want to learn step by step how to have lucid dreams, I recommend that you buy Steven LaBerge's book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming instead. If you can afford it, buy both books. They complement each other.

"Lucid Dreaming, Gateway to the Inner Self," by Robert Waggoner. Robert Waggoner guides you through his own personal learning experiences of over 30 years, as a trained psychologist, blazing a self-energizing path to enlightenment and advanced state of awareness. There is at least one additional chapter I would like to see Waggoner add to this easy-to-read page turner, the impact of the internet. The advent of the internet enables the most esoteric dream images and experiences to now be field-tested against our collective reality and knowledge base by the individual, as soon as one wakes up. The result of field-testing through the internet leads quickly to the transformational profound discovery that factual information that exists in our reality is knowable and instantly attainable merely through seeking it. The mass experience of internet confirmation of places, ideas, theories, and concepts holds the potential to quickly alter a species into an entire new level of consciousness and understanding.

Expect much more from Robert Waggoner's generous and giving spirit in which he writes. His easy to read writing style focuses on reader understanding. I'm hooked.

All my physicists and scientists friends are encouraged to read his Chapter 12 with an open mind. Page 153, Waggoner quotes a passage from Jane Roberts in her 1977 book, " The `Unknown' Reality " as Waggoner discusses discoveries made by scientists from many fields through their focused lucid dream explorations in which they set about to find scientific answers to frontier level questions of science through the lucid dream experience:

The trouble is that many in the sciences do not comprehend that there is an inner reality. It is not only as valid as the exterior one, but it is the origin for it. It is the world that offers you answers, solutions, and would reveal many of the blueprints that exist behind the world of your experience.

The true art of dreaming is a science long forgotten by your world. Such an art, pursued, trains the mind in a new kind of consciousness - one that is equally at home in either existence, well-grounded and secure in each. Almost anyone can become a satisfied and productive amateur in this art-science; but its true fulfillment takes years of training, a strong sense of purpose, and a dedication - as does any true vocation.


To some extent, a natural talent is a prerequisite for such a true dream-art scientist. A sense of daring, exploration, independence, and spontaneity is required. Such a work is a joy. There are some such people who are quite unrecognized by your societies, because the particular gifts involved are given zero priority. But the talent still exists...

A practitioner of this ancient art learns first of all how to become conscious in normal terms, while in the sleep state...


The true scientists understands that he must probe the interior and not the exterior universe; he will comprehend that he cannot isolate himself for a reality of which he is necessarily a part, and that to do so presents at best a distorted picture. In quite true terms, your dreams and the trees outside of your windows have a common denominator: they both spring from the withinness of consciousness."

Rarely do we get to hear from seasoned, expert lucid dreamers about their process. Usually, lucid dreaming is marketed to beginners, with a focus on how to lucid dream (preferably in seven days or your money back). Waggoner provides what we have been so desperately lacking: a battle-tested road map into advanced lucid dreaming.

Here's a quote from the book that sums up Waggoner's philosophy of lucid dreaming is neatly described here:

"One common assumption.... is that the [lucid] dreamer controls the dream. Yet, any thoughtful analysis shows that lucid dreamers direct their focus within the dream but do not control the dream (as the sailor does not control the sea). Those maintaining the assumption of control limit their experience and understanding, unless they are able to see through this assumption and broaden their viewpoint." p.100

Waggoner goes on to explain how this promise of dream control may at first seem fulfilled, but as dreamers move deeper into lucid dreaming practice, they will begin to notice this control unravel before their eyes. The roadblocks to greater lucidity are pointed out, with many helpful exercises to help combat them.

Waggoner presents a developmental model for lucid dreaming, based loosely on humanistic psychology with a Jungian bent. In other words, the path of lucid dreaming leads us inevitably to our growth and wholeness, even though we may go kicking and screaming, and even though we meet many nightmares, monsters and roadblocks to growth along the way.

Indeed, my own experience fits well within his model of lucid dreaming as a movement from focus on dream control and the avoidance of pain, to the ability to lose control in order to meet the dream's other autonomous characters who have much to tell me, to a focus on transpersonal experiences that are beyond the realm of representational dreaming and more in line with the experiences of advanced meditators.

What also sets Waggoner's book on lucid dreaming apart from the dozens of other books (most of which plagarize Stephen LaBerge's classic "the World of Lucid Dreaming"), is his integration of lucid dreaming with other anomalous dream experiences such as psi dreams, mutual dreams, and dreams of the dead. Waggoner has plenty of stories that would be perfect to tell around the campfire, but his interest is not on convincing his readers that these extraordinary experiences happen.

Rather, he actively invites readers to use their lucid dreams to help devise rigorous dream experiments so they can swim in these waters themselves.

Highly recommended for lucid dreaming beginners AND for those who are "stuck" and want to move into deeper waters of lucidity.

The other reviewers who have given this book five stars have said it all--this is well-written, informative, and most of all, breathes an air of integrity. I had the privilege of meeting Robert Waggoner ("Dream Bob") at a conference in Denver in September, and he is a down-to-earth, low-key and very Midwestern type of guy. The book not only covers all aspects of lucid dreaming (except maybe nutritional supplements, though he mentions these briefly) but is a remarkably honest and straightforward account of his own adventures as a lucid dreamer. If you're interested in the topic, you should buy the book.

Its well written and reasonably interesting, I read through it being excited about
all these things about being lucid in a dream, i was waiting eagerly until the chapter about
inducing the dreams(hoping it to be long and detailed), but nothing came..

Except for a few paragraphs in the last chapter there is no information for someone
who wants to trigger the awareness in the dream. This is not at all a 'How to Lucid Dream' book.
If you are already having lucid dreams it is good though, for interpreting and exploring the dreamworld,
but if your looking for techniques to practise steer well clear, go for laBerge instead.

As another reviewer here has suggested, this is the book 2008 has been waiting for in the field of lucid dreaming. Created with the high level of intelligence and pioneering quality that I'm sure many lucid dreamers have been waiting for, this remarkable book may serve as a point of reference for those eager to pursue the unknown that patiently lies in waiting just beyond our mundane awareness. The well-structured ideas presented here serve to act as a powerful and solid foundation for onieronauts of the future to explore and expand upon, bringing back to physical reality precious insights which seek to revolutionise current views of reality/dreams/mental phenomena etc.

Especially intriguing is the topic of Mutual Dreaming where 2 or more lucid dreamers design a perceptual experiment involving a predetermined co-operation within a similar dream context, in order to confirm the veracity of the experience as a shared consensus reality. The possible ramifications of future research in this particular field of endeavour will be astonishing for many to witness in times to come.

Thank you Robert. Looking forward with great anticipation to further stimulating books from you in the future!

I loved this book. I loved it's cross-referencing to classical philosophers, psychologists and poets, as well as it's alignment to current day scientific thinking. I felt that Robert Waggoner's significant intelligence and genuine humility blazed out of every page. I am an active lucid dreamer, and this may account for why I related to the book so strongly. I am in awe of what Robert Waggoner has personally experienced, and have tried to replicate his experiences. From doing this, I have found that 'what he says' works. The knowledge and techniques learned from his book have taken me to the next level in Lucid Dreaming, and I therefore can not recommend it strongly enough to anyone interested in exploring this potentially life-changing phenonema.

This book is fantastic, absolutely mind-blowing and very helpful in my search for knowledge!
My Lucid Dreams have become so much more intense and rewarding. This book has given me a Lucid Dreaming goal, and opened up possibilities I never even knew existed.
A heartfelt thank you to Robert Waggoner!

Dreams for most people are like blurry movies that are quickly forgotten upon awakening. But they could mean more. "Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self" is a guide to getting in control of one's dreams and using them to get in touch with the inner mind and find what one truly desires, unblinded by society's expectations. Lucid dreaming is a state anyone can access with practice, and is an experience that has to be experienced to truly understand the fascination. "Lucid Dreaming" is a solid guide and a hearty recommendation.