"In this remarkable book, Robert Waggoner has brought lucid dreaming to a level that is simultaneously higher and deeper than any previous explorer has taken the topic. Both autobiographical and historical, theoretical and practical, psychodynamic and transpersonal, as well as adventurous and cautionary, Lucid Dreaming offers its readers instructions and insights that they will find nowhere else in the literature. They will learn how they can become awake and aware while asleep, and how this talent can change their lives." --Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, San Francisco, Coauthor of Extraordinary Dreams and How To Work With Them
"A must read for anyone with a serious interest in lucid dreams. Robert Waggoner has written a book examining the depth and breadth of the potential of lucid dreaming. His sensitivity to the transpersonal elements of lucidity are especially illuminating." --Jayne Gackenbach, Ph.D., Editor of Psychology and the Internet: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Transpersonal Implication
"Robert Waggoner admirably fulfills his aim of bringing lucidity to lucid dreaming. His book is distinguished by its wealth of first-hand experience, and his clear recognition that, instead of seeking to control and manipulate our dreams, we should use the gift of lucidity to navigate a deeper reality and grow into connection with a deeper and wiser self. He offers practical techniques and fascinating travelers tales to encourage us to experiment with interactive and precognitive dreaming and to explore the process of reality creation inside the dream matrix. This is an invitation to high adventure." --Robert Moss, Author of Conscious Dreaming and The Three ONLY Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination
"A truly extraordinary, horizon-expanding book! Robert Waggoner goes further and deeper than any of his predecessors in exploring the implications of lucid dreaming for our synthesized understanding of consciousness, reality, and spirituality." --Robert Van de Castle, Former President, IASD; Professor Emeritus, University of Virginia Health Sciences Center; Author of Our Dreaming Mind
"Lucid Dreaming IS a gateway to the Inner Self. Robert Waggoner s unique storytelling style is compelling reading - an impressive exploration of the subject. The work is scholarly, fascinating, and, most of all, practical." --Christine Lemley, Executive Producer, DREAMTIME Series, WFYI/PBS-TV Indianapolis
Can we truly understand our dreams if we stand on the shore of sleep, reeling in memory fragments at break of day? Robert Waggoner leaves the shallows behind, sets sail to deeper waters and dives right in. This intrepid explorer leads us beneath the surface to discover undersea treasures and meet the living dream first hand. Lucid Dreaming is a rich find.... --Linda Lane Magallo'n, author of Mutual Dreaming
"Robert Waggoner's book, Lucid Dreaming is a classic resource as it inspires the reader to begin a unique journey of exploration into the deeper nature of the human psyche, our own mind, even our own soul....This is a candid and well-written account of how he progressed through the many facets of lucid dreaming on his way to becoming a true master of the lucid dreaming path." --Dale Graff, author of Tracks in the Psychic Wilderness, and RIVER DREAMS
With a MA in Consciousness Studies, blogger Ryan Hurd's thoughtfully reviews Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self at this link http://dreamstudies.org/2009/02/03/lucid-dreaming-book-review/
A Review in German by author, Christoph Gassmann: Please go to the following link to read the review http://dreamunit.net/blog-de/
A Review from author and member of the Society for Scientific Exploration, Jeremy Stafford-Dietsch
" [SSE] List members - or at least those in the embrace of Western Civilization - will not need me to remind them of the lowly status typically accorded to dreams. Presumably this is in no small part due to the rational and scientific enterprises: that which refuses to be confined to those straightjackets is best dismissed or trashed. There
is nothing more boring than someone else's dreams - or so the saying goes.
If dreams are dead in the occidental water, then what are we to make of the bizarre claim that it is possible to dream lucidly, to know that you are dreaming? The philosopher Norman Malcolm, a disciple of Wittgenstein, even wrote a book on dreaming in which he argued (with arguments borrowed from his master) that lucid dreaming is
conceptually impossible and therefore cannot happen. Most people have had a lucid dream or two and know that this is tosh. But does it greatly matter? Is lucid dreaming just another bit of fun, an internally generated virtual reality game? Since every (non-lucid) dreamer knows full well when awake that he/she does not create the marvelous, endlessly varied and instantaneously complete dream worlds, a moment of reflection raises the awkward question of what does or whether they exist as other levels of 'reality'.
I used to keep a dream diary and, although my capacity for lucidity was next to zero, I soon found myself entering into a dialogue with an inner intelligence of boundless subtlety not greatly impeded by the everyday limitations of space and time. However, when I read about lucid dreaming - specifically, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold - I was disappointed. It seemed to me that the lucid dreaming experts had next to nothing to say about the depths of dreaming or more specifically, the anomalies that imply that dreaming isn't confined within the sleeping skull. I simply could not understand how, with their added investigative tool, the lucidity experts could be so dogmatically trapped in the shallows. Perhaps the problem was with
lucid dreaming itself...
In Robert Waggoner's new book lucid dreaming is shown to be far more than what LaBerge and Rheingold dreamt (ouch!) it to be. But the pun -however painful - isn't entirely trivial. RW builds a thoughtful and subtle case for the realisation that the lucid dreamer's adventures are in no small part predetermined by how constructively the lucid
dreamer approaches and operates in the dream world. By halfway through the book he had put me in my place:
'Simply by attending to dreams, we begin to realize that some dreams are tied to a larger sense of awareness that somehow goes beyond time and space and provides individuals with shared nonlocal information. In lucid dreaming, of course, we can take this further and consciously seek out such information.' (P. 174.)
In the second half of the book and acknowledging a debt to Ed Kelloggs' even more advanced lucid dreaming skills, RW discusses the outer reaches of lucid dreaming. Can two lucid dreamers meet lucidly in the same dream and subsequently compare notes to confirm the intertwined experience? RW gives tantalising examples and states
firmly: 'I believe that experienced lucid dreamers with the proper scientific protocol and circumstance will achieve, eventually, a valid, verifiable dual-lucid mutual lucid dream within the structure of a scientific experiment,' (p. 219)....
It is pretty obvious that RW is keeping his cards close to his chest: one suspects that for every lucid dream example he gives there are many other experiences unmentioned, some because they are too precious, too ineffable or too incredible. But then until others anage to develop dream lucidity they are hardly qualified to discuss
its true dimensions."