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Comment by jerry40 | Hacker News Reader

At least his lucid dreams techniques are not that difficult to reproduce. I stopped them many years ago after I had strange experience of waking up for several times in a row. I woke up, went to a next room and, all of a sudden, I realised that it was still a dream. After short panic I woked up again only to repeat the story. And so on, actually I'm not sure if I've really woked up that day or I'm still in that dream and once I'll discover myself opening eyes there again.

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That's such a profound experience! Do you have a reference for learning those techniques?

Yes, a rule of thumb is to remember to look at your hands in a dream. You even may look at them in reality (or "reality") to get a habit. After you look at hands in a dream you remember that you in a dream. Next difficult thing is to be able not to ruin a dream and to try to explore it. I constantly tried to go through walls in my room or to fly - no success :) Also it is possible to keep attention at the period when you're go from reality to a dream. It feels like your body made of a stone and you can't move and then you're in a dream.

You can find the techniques in his book "The Art of Dreaming"

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Dreaming-Carlos-Castaneda/dp/0060...

The first one is to try to see your hands in the dream.

You can also read about Dream yoga https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Yoga-Illuminating-Through-Dream...

I think the classic book from Dr LaBerge [0] is quite good (although dated).

Lucid dreaming itself is a researched subject and there are a lot of material on that but the simplest techniques as keeping a dream journal (writing what you dreamt about each morning) so the mind recognizes that it's important to be aware of dreams and testing if you are dreaming. When you are reading this comment do you think you are dreaming? How do you know? Contrary to usual thinking dream world is quite different from "normal" world. For example you can block you nose and mount in a dream and not suffocate. Or turn on a light, in a dream it won't be as fast as in real world.

Usually sleeping during the day also triggers lucid dreams. One way or another it's a skill one can learn given some time and practice.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Exploring-World-Dreaming-Stephen-LaBe...

Yeah, wake up in the morning and then shortly thereafter go back to sleep.

For some reason, I've always suspected that this life might all be a dream and one day I will wake up as a 7-year old boy just starting school.

And I always wonder - if that happens - what should I do ? (provided that all the 'truths' I've learned while dreaming are still true)..

Should I buy Apple stock ? Should I write a search engine ? How would I convince my parents to buy me a new PC ? How should I talk to my teachers, now that I know all there is to know about math and geography and history ? Should I meet the girls that I loved ?

Things get complicated fast if you go on that path, so I hope this life is not a dream from which I'll wake up and have to live it all over again.

I really enjoy reading books about re-living your life, I think the best two I have read are Replay by Ken Grimwood and the first fifteen lives of Harry August by Claire North, very recommended.

In terms of movies also About time incidentally explored some of the same concepts.

This is the main belief of hinduism, buddhism and many other cultures, they call it reincarnation.

Tibetans have techniques called dream yoga so that you can learn to know in your dream that you are dreaming, and they call life a longer dream and the waking from this dream, ultimate liberation.

On the other hand if you knew that everything is in fact the illusion, why would you need money and girls? And is there an evidence that other people are real, or are they just parts of the illusion? To write a search engine in the illusion - is there more strange thing? :)

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