Jurgen Ziewe used lucid dreaming to travel outside of his body and explore other realms of consciousness.

photo by: Jurgen Ziewe
I always thought lucid dreaming was baloney, until I had one myself. For several years my oldest son had told me about the wild escapades he orchestrated in his dreams. But Zack's stories sounded like childhood fantasy, and I didn't pay much attention.  Then, I discovered  lucid dreaming had become a hot topic among dream researchers and those attending weekend retreats "teaching" lucid dreaming.  I decided to try it for myself.

As it turns out the most effective trigger for having a lucid dream is becoming aware it's possible. Learning others have them is sometimes all it takes to propel us into these other realms of consciousness. It was almost that easy for me. Soon after researching lucid dreaming I found myself in an ordinary dream with the realization that "I" was somehow separate from the scene being played out in front of me. It seemed like natural and normal realization, "hey, this is a dream." Once the idea sunk in I decided to take control. I did what most rookie lucid dreamer do -- I jumped into the air and took flight!

It seems unlikely this simple experience that almost anyone can achieve during a weekend course at their local Marriott can turn science's understanding of who we are on its head, but it can. Because as today's guest on Skeptiko explains, lucid dreaming gives us the undeniable experience of being the observer of reality; and that's a vantage point our current understanding of consciousness can't accommodate:

Alex Tsakiris: Even though I’ve interviewed several very respectable people who have had similar out-of-body experiences... I always feel obligated to come back and remind us that most of the world is living in a reality that doesn’t allow for this. How do you balance that on a day-to-day basis? How did you deal with it for that long period of time when you really weren’t telling anyone that this was what was going on?

Jurgen Ziewe: I think the first thing of course is we are totally focused on the physical reality, nearly everybody is. And when it comes to our dreams we hardly pay any attention. We just dismiss them as dreams. But the moment you become aware in your dreams, which is what usually happens during lucid dreams, things start changing dramatically. When you have an out-of-body experience, and very often [this] happens from a lucid dream... then you suddenly are in a position to take control of the experience. And that’s what I did--I disintegrated or interrupted the dream narrative, which is a lucid dream--which usually takes its content from the subconscious. And by doing so, after you dismantle the dream narrative, you then find yourself in a new consensus reality, which is just as real as our physical reality. And this is where things become really interesting.

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Click here for Jurgen's Website

Read Excerpts:

Alex Tsakiris: We don’t know about that extended realm. We hear about people who go and they meet these beings, and the being says, here’s my hand where I was crucified on the cross and I am Jesus… We don’t know what to make of that. And it really raises the larger question about your work: what can we really...