[continued from previous message]

TWO ways, the second of which is having a gigantically real dream.

That's what YOU did when you first began WILDing. :)
You had a gigantically real dream.

And what does one supposedly get out of crossing the first gate?

"The most astounding thing that happens to dreamers... is that
on reaching the first gate, they also reach the energy body."

I don't believe in "the energy body" (though I supposedly
"reached it" and "crossed" the first gate over 30 years ago),
but let's ignore that for now and move on to the "second gate".

"You reach the second gate of dreaming when you wake up from
a dream into another dream."

That means I also reached the 'second gate' over 30 years ago,
and it means YOU have reached the second gate too (you were
talking about how you wake up in different beds in your dreaming).

I did this a lot without knowing what CC would later say about it.
In the late 1980's I naturally developed at least 3 different ways
of changing dream scenes while maintaining lucidity. Here's what
CC said about it in 1993, again in The Art Of Dreaming:

"There are two ways of properly crossing the second gate of dreaming.
One is to wake up in another dream, that is to say, to dream that one
is having a dream, and then dream that one wakes up from it. The
alternative is to use the items of a dream to trigger another dream."

I came upon both of those methods naturally in my own dreaming,
and added a few methods of my own, such as to simply close
my dream eyes, and intend to be in a new scene when I open them.

I want to emphasize that it is merely a natural progression to do
these things, especially after using the specific exercise I did.
Why? Because I was training myself to keep doing the same
exercise no matter what the dream scenes did. And since in DILD,
although the dream scenes can be stable for a while, eventually
they always shift, I got used to paying attention to dream scene
shifts, and to all the different ways they can happen. Next,
I started intentionally causing it to happen sometimes.

"How do we fixate the assemblage point on a dreaming position?"
"By sustaining the view of any item in your dreams, or by changing
dreams at will. Through your dreaming practices, you are really
exercising your capacity to be cohesive. That is to say, you are exercising your capacity to maintain a new energy shape by holding the assemblage
point fixed on the position of any particular dream you are having..."
"How do we know we are maintaining cohesion?" "We know it by the clarity
of our perception. The clearer the view of our dreams, the greater
our cohesion."

I don't believe in "assemblage points", but I do know that in fully
lucid dreaming the clarity of even the strangest scenes can equal
the clarity and stability of our waking perception. And I did learn
how to change dreaming scenes at will.

YOU can do that too. Right?

The point is that it is natural to start focusing on different
ways of changing the dream scene while maintaining lucidity.
It is also natural, due to the phenomenon of false awakenings,
to begin to focus on maintaining lucidity while "waking up"
in different dreaming scenes.

So here we are, well into the "second gate", and so far everything
is really only a natural progression related to the attempt to
become competent and disciplined at lucid dreaming. And I arrived
at this 'second gate' 30 years ago, without being instructed on it.

Also notice, so far, there is nothing particularly or necessarily
REAL about any of this dreaming activity, other than the activities
themselves. So far, it's all just about maintaining, expanding,
and improving one's dreaming awareness.

But here's where the whole Castaneda thing jumps the shark. :)

"Upon crossing the first or second gate of dreaming, dreamers reach
a threshold of energy and begin to see things or to hear voices.
Not really plural voices, but a singular voice. Sorcerers call it
the voice of the dreaming emissary... "Let's say that the dreaming
emissary is a force that comes from the realm of inorganic beings.
This is the reason dreamers always encounter it... "Everyone hears
the emissary. Very few see it or feel it."

and...

"The second gate of dreaming is reached and crossed only when a
dreamer learns to isolate and follow the foreign energy scouts...
Waking up in another dream or changing dreams is the drill devised...
to exercise a dreamer's capacity to isolate and follow a scout...
Following a scout is a high accomplishment... When dreamers are able
to perform it, the second gate is flung open and the universe that
exists behind it becomes accessible to them... In essence, the
second gate of dreaming is the door into the inorganic beings' world,
and dreaming is the key that opens that door."

and...

"To be transported by a scout is the real dreaming task of the second gate."

Now THAT is a horse of a different color. We are now being told that
in order to progress further in dreaming we must hear voices
and be transported in our dreams to other worlds by alien beings.
Also, we've been told all this by a man we caught telling dozens of
outlandish lies. :)

This is the 'demarcation point' in Castaneda's dreaming. It is where
dreaming stops being a natural practice within one's own mind and
starts REQUIRING the belief that DREAMING WORLDS AND BEINGS ARE REAL.
And not only that they are real, but also that they are dangerous.

That's where I had to get off the train. Even if you experienced
all this, how could you know whether it was real or if you were
just going nuts?

Yet there was supposed to be a way to tell. That way requires going
further still, to "the third gate", where what supposedly happens is:
"a true merging of your dreaming reality and your daily reality".

Quotes on the third gate:

"By dreaming what you've dreamt - that you saw yourself asleep -
you arrived at the third gate. The second phase is to move around
once you've seen yourself asleep... At the third gate of dreaming...
you begin to deliberately merge your dreaming reality with the reality
of the daily world. This is the drill, and sorcerers call it completing
the energy body."

"The given drill at the third gate... is to consolidate the energy body. Dreamers begin forging the energy body by fulfilling the drills of the
first and second gates. When they reach the third gate, the energy body
is ready to come out... it is ready to act.

At the third gate, dreamers have to avoid a nearly irresistible impulse
to plunge into everything, and they avoid it by being so curious,
so desperate to get into everything that they don't let any particular
thing imprison them."

"At the third gate the entire energy body can move like energy moves:
fast and directly."

"The moment the energy body can move on its own... the optimum
position of the assemblage point has been reached. The next step is
to stalk it, that is, to fixate it on that position in order to
complete the energy body... One intends to stalk it... Let your
energy body intend to reach the optimum dreaming position... Then,
let your energy body intend to stay at that position and you will
be stalking... Intending is the secret... Sorcerers displace their
assemblage points through intending; and fixate them, equally,
through intending. And there is no technique for intending.
One intends through usage."

So there it is. The third gate is also all about intent.
Intent to see oneself sleeping. Intent to not become immersed in
detail. Intent to reach the optimum position for moving as energy.
And intent to fixate on your final optimum position.

"You have fulfilled the drill for the third gate of dreaming:
moving your energy body by itself. Now you are going to perform
the real task: seeing energy with your energy body."

The real tasks of the third gate, in addition to consolidating the
energy body, are "to determine whether the items on which you focus
your dreaming attention are energy generating, mere phantom
projections, or generators of foreign energy", and to "in full
consciousness, to use the avenue of awareness to make a journey"
(into another real world).

This is also how you tell if you're looking at your real sleeping
body or not, you have to "see energy". But forget about all that
for a second...

The key issue is that at the third gate, you can allegedly act
in the real world with your dreaming body. And if you could really
do that, then you could prove what you do in dreaming is real.

Supposedly, "dreams can take place in the consensual reality of
our daily world".

If anyone had ever *proved* that, I would have kept totally
knocking myself out to do all of these things. I would not ever
have stopped. But NO ONE EVER DID. :) Not only that, but at the
same time, most of those people either fucked up, ran away, or died.

For years, I was supposedly surrounded by naguals, scouts,
death defiers, inorganic beings, etc. and yet... not a single one
of these allegedly magical beings ever simply demonstrated beyond
a doubt that they can ACT in the real world using the 'energy body'.
No one ever did, in spite of how the entire time I was around them
I had already long been at the alleged 'second gate', on my own.

All any of those people had to do was to prove they could act
in the daily world with their energy body, but it didn't happen.
When you couple that with how we subsequently caught them lying
over and over, the obvious probable conclusion is: none of the
claims of the later 'gates' are truly possible.

Everything beyond the 'natural demarcation point' I noted above
is almost certainly mainly exaggerations, fantasies, and lies.

However, I must admit I do still wonder how Castaneda got so much
about dreaming correct. There seems to be deep consistency which
runs through his dreaming praxis, and yet no one has ever shown
his advanced techniques are real. I'm left to conclude that he
probably used his standard method of taking some things that are
to some extent real, and then exaggerating them grandiosely.

In reality, there may be all kinds of other things possible
in DILD or WILD, and with lucid dreaming in general, but everything
that extends past the beginning of the "second gate" in Castaneda's
works is probably fiction.

If somehow it's not fiction, what has to happen (for anyone in
his/her right mind to ever take any of it seriously) is for
ONE person to conclusively prove it's possible to act in the real
world with their "energy body". That's really all that ever needed
to happen to "start the revolution". And yet... since it never did,
that "revolution" must have been a lie.

There is only one other remote possibility, which is that somehow
Castaneda accessed some genuine information about advanced dreaming
that he and his own people could not truly actualize. That possibility
is also far-fetched, and I'd simply say the same thing about it,
that I could not ever take it seriously until at least one person
demonstrates the claims objectively by acting in the real world
as an 'energy body' (such a person could easily prove they had
baffling supernatural abilities).

don't need ANY of that crap to enter into a fully lucid dream state AND
into other actually + really quite interesting things to go along with
that! - WILDs are thus multifaceted, whereas dilds only really offer LDing itself as the only goal (as you've personally proven) and not much else,
so no wonder then someone might become quite bored after a while playing around with what is ostensibly only of entertainment value
alone/holodecking! (young gamers might like it but that's about all...)

If complete lucidity and full volition are possible using DILD -
and I know very well they are - then anything else you may be doing
using WILD may also be possible using DILD. At least, you shouldn't
just assume they're not. You're still very far from being an expert
on DILD, just as I am far from being an expert on WILD.

You have only described this "being in several places at once"
thing in a vague way. So... how many places are we talking about?
If it's more than 3 (which we've discussed before and which I've had
experience with myself), then it sounds like it might merely be...
confusing. Maybe you could explain why you think it is important?

besides which; dilds, because of their nature, are completely mystical compared to WILDing...

there's really no comparison, not if you're honest at any rate!

the case for dilds is thus really quite... weak?

(i've literally had dozens and dozens of dilds by now and NONE of them the result of having to intend it? at least not consciously anyway heh... plus
i still say they're weird and vague compared to the sheer instant clarity
of WILDs...)

To arrive at full lucidity and volition in DILD you have to
systematically control your dreaming actions. But I'm certainly
not the only one to ever do it. Many sleep lab experimenters have
done it too, by performing objective dream experiments.
I probably overkilled the hell out of it.

with WILDs now clearly on offer, who needs dilds??

certainly not moi :)

Except as a rhetorical device, I have never insisted anyone do
DILD the same way I do. I think it might open people's eyes if
they did, but I've always been accepting of other methods.
You're the one who keeps insisting or implying that everyone
must do dreaming as you do. Maybe you should rethink that.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)