Yesterday I had a lucid dream of visiting my grandparents.
That is, I had a dream of it, but I was aware that I was dreaming, so I could make the most of my time.
Lucid dreaming requires being in the hypnagogic state, where you possess consciousness without wakefulness. You can enter a hypnagogic state from wakefulness, or from dreamland. The problem in either case is maintaining consciousness, as it’s easy to lose in dreamland.
Yesterday, I entered the hypnagogic state by counting to myself while falling asleep. I first began counting sheep, but that was too cartoony, so then I imagined trying to count sheep in a pen, then cattle in a field, and that became cattle in my grandfather’s field. Soon I was counting the steps to his house. Then I was in a hypnagogic state.
I did not want to lose consciousness, so I then looked down while moving. In software terms, the human mind has a “known bug” in the graphics driver while sleeping: if you look down while you’re walking in a dream, you’re feet either will be invisible or else will look very, very strange. This is so noticeable that even in dreamland, it alerts your consciousness. So you can stay lucid dreaming even in dreamland by looking at your feet while walking.
In a lucid dream you can control your environment (instead of a normal dream, which is like watching a movie). You can also warp your environment if you want to, though this requires a noticeable act of will. Yesterday, I just controlled what I did and where I went, but I let dreamland unfold as it wanted to.
I visited the garage, saw the things inside vividly and individually. “There are things here I never asked about,” I thought. Outside the garage, saw the sod house flicker into and out of existence.
I entered the farmhouse through the front door. I saw the little entryway, and all the sounds inside, WNAX on the radio, my grandfather sitting down by the table, my grandma standing, my dad was there too. I heard them all. I felt the shadows of the living, but I only heard my grandpa, my grandma, and my dad.
The sounds and the textures were hyper-real, though visually everything was like a ‘progressive render,’ where it became noticeably clearer as I focused. I saw the little TV on the refrigerator. I walked from the kitchen to the dining room. I saw the old phone, the desk with the recorder that my idiot uncle gave my grandparents, the plants, and the cabinet with the radio. (I knew there was an Atari in there somewhere, though I did not look for it.)
I passed through the glass portico into the living room. I felt the tape on the large comfortable chairs. I felt the shadows of the living again. I saw the couch, the painting above the couch, and the chairs on each side. The old television (that I caused havoc with when I was young). The long table with the storage area underneath, I once hid in. The bull.
I saw the loveseat, the window, and walked to the back entry way. I was hopefully because there was a building set I loved, that belonged to my uncle when he was young, and I wanted to see the brand name, but I could not make it out. I could see the pieces vividly, see the army men and the home-made Parcheesi set set, but I could not make out the brand name.
Disappointed, I walked in the remaining rooms of the house. Each was vivid. The downstairs bathroom, my grandfathers room (in which I had a nightmarish flash back to reality, back after my grandfather died, going thru his things with my mom, then back to dreamland). Then the hall again, then up the stairs. I felt the texture, again hyperreal. I saw the old fire alarm / extinguisher / whatever it was — the least safe home-safety device ever created, seemingly constructed to explode glass outward during a fire. “I knew that would kill us all one day,” I thought.
Then I woke.