By Dr. Maurie D. Pressman

If we enter the quiet mind, we enter a borderland between waking consciousness and dream consciousness. It is the zone of Lucid Meditation. In this margin we have right of entry to many things: worries and fears, suppressed emotions, all of which can now rise to the surface to be relieved or made productive. Our dearest aspirations and longings may come up.

Our minds carry a magical power that we can mobilize when we become lucid. It is rewarding to develop this capacity, and to visualize what we dearly want to achieve. Though it may sound mysterious, it is not. Achieving what we visualize is fully possible if we make this way– the way of lucid meditation– a way of life and practice.

Lucid dreaming is a special kind of dreaming; the dreamer is awake and yet dreaming. He/she can direct the dream. At such a time, waking consciousness meets dream consciousness. When the waking mind and sleeping mind join, we have special access to high expanses of the mind.

In the lucid dream, we bring waking consciousness into the dream world; in lucid meditation we bring the dream consciousness into the waking world. In both cases, there is a joining. It is this joined consciousness that we cultivate in lucid dreaming and lucid meditation. But all this is of little benefit, if we do not bring the lessons learned from such dreams and meditation into waking life.

Lucid meditation helps us to achieve a cool and detached mind with which we can survey our emotions, make important observations about ourselves and others, and better decisions, therefore. We become more able to control passion and operate with wisdom. Practicing introspection, and keeping open to inner subtle cues, we contact the higher subtle realms. We broaden inner vision; we surrender, all the while looking inside with a surrendered expectation. We become progressively open to the higher realms and to messages that come from a higher place.

For instance, while watching a wildlife program, I was drawn in to the inner state of a puma hunting its prey. I felt the puma’s hunger, its graceful and powerful burst of speed, its satisfaction as it filled an empty stomach. This experience let me know that when we identify with either person or animal, we do so by entering the other on the subtle plane. “Avesa,” is the Sanskrit term for moving into the subtle body of another entity. Our ability to experience avesa is the basis of sympathy, empathy, and identification with another. When we are disturbed by another person’s problems, feeling their pain or their fear, they are uniting astral bodies on the subtle plane, creating avesa and identification.

Lucid meditation is the mirror of lucid dreaming. In lucid dreaming, our goal is to be awake in the dream. In lucid meditation, we are already awake, yet we try to connect with the power of the dream realm. Translated into waking life, this ability, cultivated during meditation, develops the power of our subtle senses. This capacity affirms our essential unity with all of life. It cultivates compassion, awareness, and a sense of our being in the flow of things. Using examples from meditations, I will share my experiences with lucid meditation, to show how it has helped me to be a better teacher, therapist, father, husband, and friend, and improved my sensitivity and compassion.

The Superworld and the Dream

The Supermind dwells in the Superworld. The Superworld extends across the universes; in it we are everywhere in a moment. It is the world of thought and at the same time a world beyond thought, reaching ever higher into a sphere of undiscovered power. A world of consciousness, it embraces all things, for all things have consciousness. It is ever present, yet hidden by the veil of cynicism and doubt. The Superworld can be reached through the silent mind, but at the same time, by elevation of the self, the personality, into that spiritual High Essence called Self. This is achieved by raising our thoughts and aspiration to high realms of beauty, love and service.

We experience the Superworld in our dreams, in which movement is easy, where all things are possible and reality is ever created anew. In our astral bodies, we visit the infinite realms of the dream. Finally, we visit the domain of All Love.

Dreams have an important relationship to the Superworld. The Supermind can be entered in a dream. There, we can understand more deeply. Our dreams help us to evaluate progress or lack of progress in our evolution, and through them, we can prognosticate and help to find our future path. But in order to see into the future and into the way things are in the higher realm, we must drop the shackles of doubt and the inhibition we have been taught. It is absolutely necessary to take the visions we see literally. In this way, we get a feel of the power that resides within, as we inhabit the Superworld: the facility to move, create, understand and change. I have always relied on dreams to understand my patients more deeply. Now I can use them to see into the higher world, which they and we can, and do, inhabit.

Dreams are thought journeys into the future. When we take our dreams seriously, even literally, we can use them to move upward, and create.

How Do We Move Through The Mirror To The Dream World?

How do we move through the mirror to the dream world-and access the Supermind? To enter this world that can bring us greater love, unity, knowledge, power, confidence and beneficence, and integrate it into the plane of existence with which we are so commonly familiar?

Settle into a half-dream place, a state of lucid meditation – remaining awake, and yet settling into the dream world. (A caution – remove doubt about what is seen until it can become understood and integrated with this world. Doubt is a barrier which can inhibit your movement between states.)

Begin your lucid meditation in this half-asleep state. Travel into a quiet receptive mood, ready for the unexpected. Set the ego aside, no longer clinging to our sometimes self-centered and already established assumptions. Once we have done this we have opened the gate called intuition and are ready to receive downloads from the Cosmic Mind, the Supermind that both surrounds us and is within us.

– Dr. Maurie D. Pressman is the author of Living in the SuperMind -From Personal Mind to Spiritual Mind. A conventionally-trained psychiatrist, he has combined that work with studies in the high reaches of the mind. His practice focuses on spiritual psychotherapy and the exploration of the human soul. He is Emeritus Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Temple Medical School and Emeritus Chairman of Psychiatry at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, PA, Dr. Pressman was an early pioneer in visualization, creating a highly-successful innovative program in 1972 for Olympic ice-skaters using hypnosis and visualization. For more information, visit www.mauriepressman.com.