EP86: Dreaming Wide Awake- Exploring Lucid Dreams and Psychedelic Experiences

In this engaging conversation, we discuss the mysteries of consciousness with guest David J. Brown, author of many books including 'Dreaming Wide Awake' and 'The Illustrated Field Guide to DMT Entities'. We talk about topics like lucid dreaming, psychedelics, and the intersection of neuroscience and mysticism. David shares his journey into lucid dreaming, his collaboration with noted figures like Stephen LaBerge, Stanley Krippner, and explores intriguing phenomena such as shared dreaming and DMT experiences. 

David's Books
 Dreaming Wide Awake
 https://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-Wide-Awake-Shamanic-Psychedelics/dp/1620554895 

 The Illustrated Field Guide to DMT Entities  https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Illustrated-Field-Guide-to-DMT-Entities/David-Jay-Brown/9781644119198.

Transcript

Amina: Science is going to really have to shift their perspective on how we study things because we don't even know what consciousness is, let alone where it goes when we sleep. So, and I mean, I do personally believe that it's possible for a soul to leave the physical [00:54:00] body and explore other dimensions, but I'm totally open to being wrong about that.

David: I really, I hate that phrase, just a dream. You know, our parents tell us when we wake up from a nightmare as a child, it was, honey, it was just a dream. And I think that, you know, dreams are such profound states of consciousness. And lucid dreaming always has a kind of, uh, antidepressant effect on me. I always wake up, always wake up feeling great from a lucid dream.

Amina: Today's guest is David J. Brown, an author of one of my favorite lucid dreaming books. So I'm really happy that we're here chatting today. And I'm really excited to hear. Your story of how you got interested in dreams to begin with. 

David: Yeah. Hi, Amina. It's a great pleasure to be here. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm David J.

Brown. Um, I'm the author of, uh, Dreaming Wide Awake, which is a book about how, uh, lucid dreaming and psychedelics and shamanic healing all interface with one another. And, uh, my, my background is in [00:55:00] psychobiology and neuroscience. And, um, I'm the author of I guess 19 books now about the evolution of consciousness.

And I'm delighted to be here with you. 

Amina: That's awesome. Yeah, I love your books. I've only read Dreaming Wide Awake and it's really good. I love all the topics in there, all the deep experiences, parallel universe, out of body, even, you know, all these studies on consciousness and things like that. I love how deep it goes.

So that's really why it's one of my favorites because it covers so many good and juicy topics. 

David: Oh, thank you. Yeah, it was, it was a, I think it was a taboo topic for sure. people who are involved in lucid dreaming to talk about its relationship with psychedelics. I hadn't seen anyone do it before, and it seemed like such an obvious connection to me.

So thank you for that introduction. I appreciate that. 

Amina: Yeah, definitely. Those are definitely some great topics that I want to get into and we'll talk about here. But I first wanted to know, like, What were your first lucid dream experiences or your first dreams that really got [00:56:00] you interested in consciousness and studying dreams?

What was that journey like for you? 

David: Yeah, so I got interested in lucid dreaming when I was, uh, I had my first experience when I was 16 years old. I spontaneously had a lucid dream, um, just a couple of days after my first psychedelic experience with LSD. And, uh, I didn't really understand the power of it or what it was, but what, you know, perked my interest, I sort of always had good dream recall ever since I was a child.

And I've always been interested in dreaming, but I had my first lucid dream when I was a teenager, but it wasn't until I was in my mid twenties that I met Stephen LaBerge. the lucid dream researcher from Stanford University and, uh, and read his book on lucid dreaming. And, uh, that's when I learned that there was, uh, techniques that you can utilize to help, uh, increase the frequency of lucid dreaming.

And there was, uh, there's a whole range of amazing possibilities as to what one can do in a lucid dream state that I wasn't aware of. So it [00:57:00] was, it was around 10 years after I had my first lucid dream. began to recognize the great power that I had available to myself. And ever since that, that first lucid dream I had, I just, I had them, you know, spontaneously pretty regularly.

Um, and then after I started practicing the techniques and I, I got through periods in my life where I just had them in great abundance and was able to really explore the state and, uh, and see what the, the possibilities were. 

Amina: Yeah, I love that. That's such a good feeling to really have your first lucid dream, and it's just so mind blowing.

I feel like everybody should have that experience at least once. Yeah, 

David: I couldn't agree more. I think it's something that's available to everyone. Most people have a lucid dream, as you know. At least, I think like 75 percent of people have at least one in their lifetime. But I think it's a, you know, a learnable skill and anyone can learn how to do it.

Amina: Definitely. Yes, I agree. And you mentioned that you worked with Steven LaBerge and you got the chance to meet him and get some mentoring from him. [00:58:00] What was that like? I know he's one of the pioneers in lucid dreaming research. I don't know what he's up to these days. I hear he's kind of hard to find, but, um, I think it's really cool that you've been on this journey and at a peak time when it was just starting to get.

Some scientific validation. And now we know lucid dreaming and there's a lot of research on it. But what was that like in the beginning, watching this kind of evolve and getting to work with some of these legends? 

David: Well, I met Steven through my friend, Oscar Janiger, who was a psychiatrist in Los Angeles who was doing research at one point into psychedelics and creativity.

And he was the psychiatrist who turned on Cary Grant. Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, uh, Anais Min, and many other people in Hollywood, uh, to psychedelic experiences back when it was, when it was a legal psychotherapeutic tool, um, he was telling me about, um, about someone who he had, through one of his foundations, he had given a grant to Stephen LaBerge, and that was the, the [00:59:00] initial money, I think, that the, use for, it's not his first project, but one of his first projects that he, that he did when he was at Stanford University.

Well, as you probably have known from, you know, seeing videos of Stephen, he's an incredibly articulate and brilliant man. And, uh, he, well, he wasn't the first one to actually do lucid dream research. That was, uh, Keith Hearn in, uh, England with, uh, Alan Worsley back, I think around five years before, uh, Stephen did it.

But, um, they, Stephen didn't know about Keith's work and Alan's experience at the time, and I think he thought he was first because there wasn't as much communication with scientific journals back then as there is today. Hanging out with Stephen, I got to, he's the one who taught me how to How to do the techniques that, um, I was able to utilize to increase the frequency of lucid dreaming and to help me to realize the, uh, the possibilities, uh, that I had before me.

Do you want me to ask a question about other people? I mean, I've worked with, uh, Stanley Krippner is another, um, [01:00:00] another dream researcher who I've, uh, had a lot of experience with. I interviewed both Stephen and Stanley for, uh, for my, for my book. Stephen is in my book Mavericks of the mind. Which is the first collection of interviews that I did and Stanley is in my, um, in the book, uh, The Frontiers of Psychedelic Consciousness.

Um, so if people are interested, they can, they can check out those interviews. 

Amina: That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, these people are very inspiring and I mean, you have been writing and working and, you know, thinking alongside them. So, you know, you're just as legendary. I hope you know that. 

David: Thank you. I appreciate your, your kind words.

Amina: Yeah. And what kind of techniques, um, did you use at the time? And are those still techniques that you use today or like, how has your practice evolved? 

David: Yeah, well, the, the technique that I learned from Steven, that's really the, um, Most powerful technique, I know, but using techniques together in conjunction seems to work the best, which I'll explain in a minute.

But what I learned from Stephen was to begin [01:01:00] questioning, um, to get into the habit of questioning whether I was in a dream, um, all the time. So I sort of, I set my alarm and every hour for days I would ask myself the question, am I dreaming right now? Am I dreaming right now? Is this a dream? Would take a what's called a reality test.

This is for me that the best one that I found was to pick up a book or, um, or something with written text on it and to look at it and, uh, and look away and then look back and, uh, in, in this, uh, in our consensus material reality, the text on the book. Will will stay consistent and stay the same and in a dream almost every time when you look and look away Um, it it changes So so if you get into the habit of doing this throughout the day It it'll carry over into your dream time and it's very important that you take the reality test because if you don't do that You'll you'll just ask yourself.

Am I dreaming [01:02:00] right now? And you'll you'll You'll conclude that you're not when you're in a dream because it's very hard to distinguish and most people, most people will just simply conclude that they're dreaming and then wake up a few minutes later and say, Oh no, I should have, I should have taken a reality test.

So I think it's, it's important to get into the habits of doing that regularly. And, uh, and, and that for me was probably the most powerful technique. Combining that with, um, what they call the wake up back to sleep method, which is to set your alarm clock around, uh, around two or three hours before you normally wake up.

And to get up, walk around the house a little bit, stretch, you know, don't wake yourself up too much, but, but enough to sort of get your mind a little more active than usual. And then going back to sleep, and many times people often record a lucid dream after after doing that. I also would, as I'm going to sleep to sort of repeat the phrase to myself.

The next time I'm dreaming, I'm going to recognize that I'm dreaming. The next time that I'm dreaming, I'm going to [01:03:00] recognize that I'm dreaming. Sort of try to hypnotize myself and that also seemed to help. And keeping a dream journal, um, it's very important to record your dreams, to, to write them down the moment that you get up and get into the habit of recording them regularly.

The more attention you pay to your dreams, the better you'll remember them and the more easy they come. And, um, and then the more, um, more likely you are to not only have a lucid dream, but to remember it if you have one. So combining all the, these, these different methods. And I also, um, talk in my book about, um, different nutritional supplements and dietary aids that one can use, but also.

Seem to help increase the frequency. So it's so just um combining all these things and also, you know, just Talking about it, uh seems to help, you know The more the more focus you put on it in your life the more likely it is to happen So, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if you know Some of your some of your listeners have a have a lucid dream tonight after listening to this podcast [01:04:00] uh, because it's it's been reported to me many times, you know that people say oh I just read your book and you know, I had a lucid dream or You know, I just heard you on the podcast and that night I had a lucid dream.

So just get into the habit of talking about it, thinking about it, reading books about lucid dreaming and all these things kind of snowball together and they start to happen more frequently for most people. 

Amina: Yes, I love when that happens when people say like, Oh, I watched something of yours or listened to this and it helped me get lucid.

It's really good feeling. And I love that we're able to just help people have that experience, especially if it's their first lucid dream. And I've noticed even for myself, the more that I read about it and learn about it, it's helped me, you know, have deeper experiences within my dreams as well. 

David: Yeah, yeah.

And also to learn what's possible, you know, talking to other lucid dreamers, to learn what's possible to do in a lucid dream. I'm always like, Oh, I can try that in my next lucid dream. And you know, on and on. 

Amina: Yeah, for sure. And it's really important just to normalize dream sharing so that people feel comfortable talking about their dreams, even if they're not lucid dreamers.

So There's kind of two sides of it from what I see. There's [01:05:00] people that are more logical and, you know, they see dreams as just products of our subconscious and projections of, you know, our memories and things like that. And then there's the side of it. That's a little bit more metaphysical that sees dreams as something deeper.

Maybe we enter this interdimensional space that we can actually share with other people and contact other entities that are not human. Where do you lie on that spectrum? And what do you think about that? 

David: Yeah, I like to examine it from really from all different, uh, from all different angles. I mean, my, my background is in biology and neuroscience.

And I, I think that, uh, you can get a great deal of insight into what's happening in your brain during a dream. And that can, and that can help inspire us in certain ways. You know, most, most neuroscientists and psychobiologists would say that, that the person, the purpose of dreaming is to help, uh, consolidate memories in the brain, that when we, when we dream at night, that what we're doing is we're, we're deleting and throwing out a certain memory from the day and, uh, and [01:06:00] consolidating other sort of this, uh, way of sifting through our memories and putting some into long term storage and, uh, and other ones, uh, just, uh, Trashing them.

But anyone who is really, you know, starts to pay attention to their dream realizes that there is no symbolic significance often with the unconscious mind trying to, you know, send you messages, things that you weren't, weren't paying attention to in your life. And then anyone who really starts spending time lucid dreaming did first people will.

You know, explore all the, you know, the obvious things that they couldn't do in this reality, like, uh, like flying, or if they're on a diet, eating foods that they couldn't eat, or having sex with their ideal lover, or, you know, rollercoaster rides, all kinds of things that are involved. Great sensory, uh, Pleasures and things like that, which is certainly great fun.

And it's part of the initial attraction that many people have towards lucid dreaming. I mean, almost everybody loves that loves flying, but the more you do it, the more you start paying attention to the subtle things that are going on, start. [01:07:00] Uh, really exploring what it's like to communicate, uh, with the other dream characters, and realizing that they have, uh, complex personalities, and, uh, and the incredible mystery that's involved in, you know, in whether they have some kind of independent existence or not, you know, the philosophical implications just start to become staggering the more you Time you spend in a lucid dream and exploring what these, uh, what these characters think.

And then even, you know, when you go deeper into the process, you know, you can start to communicate with characters that have great wisdom, you know, to share and know more about you than you seem to know about yourself. And you can keep leveling it up till you begin to actually communicate with the intelligence, uh, behind the dream itself.

Some kind of a dreaming mind that's behind your conscious mind that orchestrates what happens in a dream. And you can dialogue with that. You can just, you know, instead of talking to the characters in your dream, you can just lift your head up to the sky and just talk to the dream itself. And it will talk back to you either in, you know, in your native language or [01:08:00] through some symbolism within the dream.

And I think that, you know, can, can lead to a type of spiritual or mystical experiences. And these types of experiences then, you know, lead you to, Question you know what is reality and what is real and what are the philosophical implications of all this and then you know you start to wonder is is is the dream space, just a simulation created by your brain or is it a an actual three dimensional space that you share with other people like this reality.

Um, when you get into the idea of shared dreaming, dreams that, you know, you can share with other people, then you start to really wonder if there's, uh, if there's a separate reality to this. And, you know, I don't have any, any firm beliefs about, about what it is, but, um, I certainly love to speculate and be open to, to all the different possibilities that there are with these, uh, incredibly fascinating adventures into our unconscious minds.

Amina: Yeah, me too. It's really mind blowing. And I do agree with the theories of, you know, processing memories and our daily life, [01:09:00] things that our brain just has to sort through. And, you know, emotional regulation and all those theories. I do think that some dreams serve that purpose. And maybe there's levels to dreams and some dreams are true, deeper experiences where we do travel interdimensionally.

And that's something that we don't really have the scientific tools to prove necessarily. And I also think that science is going to really have to shift their perspective on how we study things because we don't even know what consciousness is, let alone where it goes when we sleep. So I think there's a long way to go there.

But yeah, what do you think is still yet to be discovered? Like, do you have an idea on what is needed for science to really catch up in that department? 

David: Well, as you, as you say, you know, consciousness itself is, is the greatest mystery, uh, even though many neuroscientists will tell you that there's a chemical basis for consciousness and a physical basis for consciousness, it's, it's a profound mystery and, and no one has a clue as to how, you know, how the, how the brain becomes conscious, how the atoms in our brain become self aware and [01:10:00] self reflecting entities.

It's, it's a, it's an incredible, it's an incredible mystery. As, as, as to where our future research lies with this, I, I'm incredibly intrigued by the, the research they did at the, the Max Planck Institute, where they were able to, with what's called transcranial brain stimulation, which is, you know, a type of, uh, noninvasive, little, it's a band you wear around your head.

And when people are, are dreaming. And they use this transcranial brain stimulation to activate their or to stimulate their prefrontal cortex, an area in the brain that's usually dormant when people are dreaming, but is known to be active when people are having lucid dreams when it's activated by a transcranial brain stimulation, something like 88 percent of people then report lucid dreams, which is a way of turning lucid dreaming on, uh, by command.

So this there, there's, I think, West, I heard there was a Kickstarter program that someone was trying to to mass produce and miniaturize this technology, and I think that when it becomes [01:11:00] available, that we'll be able to explore the possibility of people having shared lucid, lucid dreams, and I think then that will, will add greater credence to the possibility, or the, to the possible reality that these, these spaces are, are three dimensional, um, environments that could be shared with other people.

So I think that's really where where the future of this lies. I'm also very intrigued by the research that's been going on lately with a psychedelic drug called dimethyltryptamine or DMT. where they're putting people into extended states with this. And, and one of the things that they're, they're trying to do, or they're planning to do in the future, is to put people into these states simultaneously to see if they also have a shared experience in these other realities.

So I think that the, uh, the future of this research Really is going to be blown wide open when people are able to share these experiences together and explore the mysterious and fascinating terrain inside our [01:12:00] dreams and these altered states of consciousness. 

Amina: Wow, that's exciting. Yeah, I definitely agree that technology is going to be a big part of, you know, the future of studying consciousness.

especially with dreams, you know, a lot of scientists right now, the big thing is reliably inducing lucid dreams. That's kind of the first step before we can focus on, you know, the shared dreaming and stuff, although that's my research interest as well. And you mentioned DMT, I do want to talk about that a little bit.

And I know that it's a big topic on one of your latest books. So I'll let you share that as well. But what has been your experience and thoughts on it? I'll just like preface this by saying, and correct me if I'm wrong. That DMT is, it's a compound that is also naturally found in the body, particularly in the lungs and spinal fluid.

And we don't exactly know what it does in the body, but it gives people when taken as a psychedelic, these intricate, interdimensional experiences, and a lot of interesting things can happen. What is the relation to [01:13:00] DMT and dreaming in your 

David: opinion? Well, um, Rick Straussman, who is one of the, um, Primary DMT researchers in the world has speculated that DMT is naturally produced in the brain when we're dreaming, and then it may be responsible for our dreams.

That's just speculation at this point, but DMT is, you know, is, is profoundly interesting, uh, dimethyltryptamine, uh, as it's known chemically, is found throughout nature. Um, as you mentioned, it's, it's found in our bodies, it's found in all animal bodies, and it's found in many, many plants. In fact, it's, it's so common throughout nature that, uh, Dennis McKenna said that, you know, nature is drenched in DMT.

It's in almost, almost every plant and almost every animal. And no one, no biochemist, no biologist knows what it does. We don't know what function it serves. We do know that in rodents and rats and mice, their DMT levels go up when they go into [01:14:00] cardiac So that leads credence to the idea that DMT made may be produced, uh, when people have near death experiences or when they're dying.

But again, this is just, this is just speculation. When, when DMT is administered, uh, to people as a, as a drug, people not only report psychedelic experiences that are like LSD or psilocybin, where they see, you know, kaleidoscopic patterns and imagery and go into different altered states, but it sort of takes people to a, to an even deeper level where they go into a, if you, if you have enough of it, at least you go into an alternative reality.

That's very much like being in a lucid dream. It's a completely consistent alternative world that has its own own environment. And, you know, is populated by, uh, by entities, uh, intelligent beings that, uh, that you can communicate with. And almost everybody who has had the experience, uh, comes back with this, it's more real than real type of feeling.

[01:15:00] It doesn't feel like some kind of vague, hate to use the word dreamlike because it's not really the proper adjective because dreams can be extremely vivid as you know, from a lucid dream. But, um, but it, people come back from a DMT experience. There's nothing vague about it. It's a very sharply realistic experience that people are profoundly moved by.

And even though it generally lasts for only a few minutes, it can be extended in these studies by giving it to people continuously, or it can also be extended by taking an MAO inhibitor. Uh, which is the, um, the basis for the, uh, Amazonian, uh, brew shamanic that's used shamanically, uh, down in the Amazon known as, uh, ayahuasca.

It's, uh, it's the subject of, um, of my latest book. I just, um, completed a book, uh, with, uh, Sarah, Sarah Finn Huntley. She's a brilliant artist, and we did a book together called The Illustrated Field Guide to the DMT Entities, where we catalog 25 of the most [01:16:00] commonly encountered entities that people, people experience when they go into this DMT space, like traditional aliens, or mantis beings, or clowns and jesters, octopus like beings, there's Surprisingly, a very, uh, a lot of common reports where people in or counter these, uh, these same types of beings.

And this seems to lead credence to the idea that there's a, an independently existing reality that we're, we're tapping into when we go into these states. So I've been very interested in the interface, uh, between, uh, DMT experiences, entity contact, uh, UFO abduction phenomena, and, uh, and lucid dreaming where we have this, uh, People, many people report encounters with other beings and entities that seem to have genuinely independent existences that we can communicate with and, um, and potentially learn from.

Amina: Wow. That's super incredible. And, you know, it's similar to the dreams, you know, really deciding if some dream characters are just smarter beings [01:17:00] that are beyond us. And the, yeah, the fact that people have similar experiences and see similar types of things independently of each other is, is really telling.

So that's, that's really cool. I'll definitely link all of your books below. And I also had Sarah on the podcast too. So people can check that out if they're interested, but, um, yeah, it's, it's a really cool book. It looks very colorful and, and trippy, so I'm excited for it. 

David: Yeah, we not not only Sarah, but we have a number of other artists also contributed, Alex Gray contributed to the book, Harry Pack, many around 50 other artists.

So there's, there's quite a quite a variety of different artistic interpretations of these beings in the book. 

Amina: Yeah, that's great. I'm really interested in general and altered states of consciousness and how they relate. I also heard that DMT like is released a lot when we die, like you said, and also when we're born, like our first moments on earth, which is really interesting to me.

It makes me feel like it has something to do with the transitional state across the [01:18:00] veil, you know, across dimensions, which makes a lot of sense. Maybe it's there to support us spiritually. And it's something that is bridging the science and the spirituality. 

David: Yeah, that's that's why Rick Straussman.

Nicknamed it the spirit molecule many people just have this intuitive feeling that the DMT is is Helps to usher our spirit in and out of our body You know at birth and death and it may be the bridge that you're describing But uh, but this is you know, this is just speculation. Nobody really knows what um, what what DMT does in the brain, 

Amina: right?

Yeah, well that would make sense for dreaming too If you believe that we leave our body during certain dreams or obe's or whatever you Classify it as so that seems pretty potentially possible. 

David: Yeah, it certainly has a feeling of ringing true Yeah for many people. 

Amina: Yeah, cool So also I wanted to ask you is is there a certain psychedelic experience that you would feel comfortable sharing and a dream as well but I [01:19:00] I'd like to give you the chance to share both if you have anything that comes to mind.

David: Sure, I can, I can, I can, I can share both. Let's see, a dream, a really powerful dream that I had, um, when I was spending time in the Middle East and I was visiting a friend in Israel, um, I, I had this dream where, where I was, uh, in this, wide auditorium with a Crowd of people and we were all standing up in the auditorium and we were all facing This front stage and up on the stage was was a throne and and sitting on the throne was uh Was a woman with a with the head of a cat a sort of human hybrid entity And she had these sort of, uh, large beaming eyes and she was looking out at, uh, at the audience and everyone in the audience was like trembling with this, with this fear, this, this, this anticipation, this knowing that, that she was going to take one of us in some kind of way.

And then suddenly out of her eyes shot this like laser beam and it [01:20:00] went straight towards this little boy who was, uh, who was in the group with us and he just immediately fell over dead in the dream. And. Seconds after that, everyone was like greatly relieved in the room and, uh, and, uh, the human, uh, sea lion entity sitting on the stage, uh, suddenly turned to complete stone.

She turned to, you know, her body seemed to turn to concrete or stone and she became like a marble statue. Her eyes became vacant and there was this kind of understanding that she had, she had, you know, one of us was to be sacrificed to her. And now that, you know, she took one of us, the rest of us, we're safe.

for the time being or something like that. And I woke up from this dream and this kind of, you know, cold sweat. My, it was just with my heart racing and it was a very, very intense couple of weeks later, I was, um, I was visiting, uh, Rupert Sheldrake, the British biologist who I was working with at the time, um, on a number of research projects.

And, uh, Rupert and I were walking around the Hampstead [01:21:00] Heath, which is an area in London. It's um, with a lot of, it's like a little forest in the middle of London. And we were walking around and I was recounting my dream to Rupert and he goes, you know, that's, that's remarkable that you had that dream. I just, Got this book the other day by a woman named Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote a book called Blood Rites, and in the book he describes how in our evolutionary past, there was a period where, you know, we, um, where we were the prey, we're humans, we're the prey of wildcats, and we had to, you know, kind of always live in fear that the wildcats would take one of us, but also the wildcats would, um, Kill and capture other animals that they would eat and only partially devour and then leave the rest, you know, basically, you know, unattended and that became a food source for us.

So he saw the this this relationship that early humans had with with wildcats as being kind of archetypal basis [01:22:00] for for the, um, for the foundation for our religions, where we develop the idea of, you know, sacrifice to, uh, a higher being that could, you know, being that could take our life and also give us life at the same time.

And I thought it was remarkable that I had this dream in Israel, which is where all the, you know, the three major Western religions began. So that was, that was kind of a remarkable synchronicity. And then a few months later, I was looking through a book on Egyptian mythology, and I encountered the goddess Basset, who is a deity with a female body and the head of a cat.

And there was a picture of her sitting on a throne, and it looked exactly like, you know, the deity in my dream. And that struck another chord. And then several years later, I went to visit Jeff McBride, Jeff and Abigail McBride in their home in Las Vegas. And in their backyard, they had this, uh, this larger than life statue of Basset that [01:23:00] looked identical from my dream.

So, so that one dream sort of set up all these strange reverberations throughout my life that gave me a very deep insight into the nature of religion. And I, you know, I've wondered about that dream. It didn't feel like a, like a personal communication about my unconscious. It seemed like I was tapping into something transpersonal, like it was something from the collective unconscious there.

And that I was tapping into something archetypal or something that was, uh, that was much bigger, bigger than myself. So that's, that's, that's a dream that I, that I, uh, that I experienced that had a profound influence on me. Uh, a psychedelic experience that I, that I can share was my, um, my very first experience with, uh, with DMT, which was, uh, in 1983.

someone scraped together the orange and brown powder that they had on their, um, in their kitchen drawer. And, uh, just think of how badly I wanted to try the DMT and they had some. And, um, they put it in this, uh, large bong and used this, like, [01:24:00] Incredible flamethrower to vaporize it seemed like this very intense process and he told me, instructed me to take these three large, uh, three large hits of it.

So I laid back on the couch and began to do this. It tastes like disgusting, burning plastic and it's not easy to hold this stuff in your lungs, but I inhaled it deeply and as I was inhaling it within, Within about 5 or 10 seconds, I began to feel it and it felt like a, uh, like an LSD experience that I had had and, you know, started to see geometric patterns.

And this was just within 10 seconds. Within 20 to 30 seconds, it escalated to becoming far more intense than anything I ever experienced on LSD or mushrooms. Then I blew it out and took a second hit of it. And at this point, I really started, you know, like almost leaving my body and everything in my.

Connection to this reality started to become rather unstable and then somehow I managed to take in a third hit [01:25:00] And it was at some point when I was holding in that third hit that I just felt my uh, my consciousness pop into this other world where um, where I was Suddenly able to see in 360 degrees, uh around me and I was in this Space that was highly technological.

There was all kinds of strains, um, contraption, medical contraptions and technologies that I couldn't seem to grasp tubes and wires and strange things. And there were these elf like beings that were that were diving into some kind of machine. And they were coming out the other end and I was watching them and they seemed to be having great experience and great pleasure doing this.

And as I'm watching these, uh, these beings do this, uh, suddenly a large mantis like creature, uh, notices me and comes over to me and immediately starts, um, hooking up some kind of apparatus to my head or to my brain, um, in this other reality. And, um, [01:26:00] and starts, uh, experimenting on me and testing me in some way.

And what I was experiencing was, uh, something like, um, like, uh, filters that were being switched over my eyes. And it was like asking me, you know, is it like this, like this, like this, like this. And each time it would. keep switching these filters, I would experience this like rush of like, uh, synesthetic sensations.

Like, you know, all my senses were being stimulated at once in this kind of synesthesia that was like, I was tasting and feeling and smelling everything. And it was extremely, extremely intense. And it kept adjusting my react, as I was reacting to this, it kept adjusting something and testing and recording.

It seemed like it was fine tuning or adjusting something in my brain at the time, and it was actually a very, very frightening experience, you know, it seemed to last forever, but, um, I slowly started to, to come out of it and suddenly feel like my body was back in the living room with my friend and [01:27:00] my, my very first thought that I had at this point was, Oh my goodness.

I'm a human being who did a drug. You know, I, that was, I had actually forgotten, you know, that was what I was. And that was like a revelation at that point. And upon, you know, later reflection, I was, um, I was doing neuroscience research at the time at New York University and I was experimenting on, on animals, on animal brains.

And I, and I felt that this, uh, this entity that I encountered in the DMT space was trying to show me what I was, what I was doing. to the animals. I had an experience years later when I was working in a neuroscience lab in, um, at the University of Southern California, and I was, I was administering a ketamine to, uh, to the, to the rabbits as a, as an anesthetic before I would surgically implant electrodes or, uh, cold probes into their brains.

And I, I, you know, tried some ketamine at that time. And I was again, transported into like, uh, some kind of futuristic extraterrestrial laboratory where [01:28:00] these giant rabbits were experimenting on me and experimenting on my brain. After I came out of that experience, I didn't, I didn't want to, experiment on animals any longer, and I didn't, uh, I didn't continue with that program for very long, but, uh, but those, uh, those two psychedelic experiences had a very profound influence on me, and they stopped me from doing any further, further animal research.

Amina: Yeah, wow, that's super, super fascinating, and deep, honestly, and it's like, you know, okay, one could argue that those are just, you know, hallucinations from the psychedelic, but the way I'm thinking, like, let's say that, you know, you can really enter this other dimension and meet these other beings or aliens or whatever you call them.

And a lot of people have interesting, weird dreams, experiences of being, you know, experimented on by aliens. I've had actually a psychedelic experiments. Similar to that as well experience. I mean, and for one, what are they experimenting on? What are they trying to figure out? They're obviously more advanced than we are.

And if they're not confined to time and space, like maybe that, that being [01:29:00] like knew you were coming that day from your friend's couch, he knew you were going to take the drug and come visit and whatever. And it, it seems like it's all connected from that moment to, you know, when they were helping you with the, with the rabbit experiments.

So yeah, it's really interesting. If we kind of run experiments on. Beings that are, you know, less advanced than we are, like animals, mice and rabbits, and it would make sense that some higher dimensional beings might want to know about us. I don't know. 

David: Yeah, it's, it's very commonly reported with people who have experienced what they call the alien abduction phenomena, where they feel like they're taken out of their, kind of their beds at night, brought up in a beam of light spacecraft and, uh, Paralyzed and put onto an operating table where gray aliens stand around them and perform different types of experiments.

There's a huge amount of correlation between the alien abduction phenomena and the entity contact experience that people have with EMT. And that's one of the things that I explore [01:30:00] at length in my new book. 

Amina: So, do you think, like, with alien abductions, like, are they actually abducting our physical bodies or is it like an out of body type experience?

Like, do you even think, like, can somebody leave a body? A lot of people don't even think that's possible, so. 

David: That's, that's a really interesting question and, um, and there's a lot of controversy around that. I spoke to John Mack, the, um, the Harvard, um, psychiatric researcher who wrote the book and was the first, uh, academic to really take seriously Um, people's reports of alien abduction and, and I asked him about that.

I asked him about, about, uh, Terrence McKenna's, you know, reports and how similar, you know, Tamara Terrence McKenna had, he's one of the people who popularized the idea of entity contact, what he called the self transforming machine elves. And I asked, you know, I asked John whether he thought there was any correlation between these types of experience.

And he said to me that he thought that, you know, that. That there, there may be two types of experiences where some people are taken out of, out of their, you know, out of [01:31:00] their bodies and they're, you know, they have some type of, uh, astral body that's being experimented on. But there's also, you know, quite a number of reports where, you know, people report that, and I've seen on, you know, get radar confirmation that there were UFOs in the area where people have had, you know, alien abductions.

And there are, you know, sometimes people, you know, their partners, uh, notice that they're missing from their bed. And sometimes, People's report that their partners are not missing. So it seems like like both Maybe possible, you know, actually, and you know, and what their what their reality is, you know, I mean, nobody knows That's why we're exploring these things and why we're so intrigued by them 

Amina: Yeah, that's interesting.

And I mean, I know that's a scary concept for a lot of people I'm not really personally scared of exploring the universe, but I know it is very daunting and I don't know I'm sure that there are Aliens are beings and entities that, you know, are more positive and negative. If that duality exists beyond physical reality, you know, the same way that there's people with good [01:32:00] intentions and bad intentions.

So maybe it's just kind of depends on who we come into contact with. 

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that you should be very wary of what, uh, what the entities tell you and take it all with a grain of salt, like with people you meet in this reality. I mean, you know, trust builds up over time, you know, and over experience.

So, so it's a good idea to be a little bit suspicious of them initially, but, uh, but you can build trust up with these, with these entities over time and over, uh, repeated experience. You know, I just wanted to say something about the, about the level of fear that people experience with this, because, you know, I, I've always said, if I was, you know, if I was brought along, you know, aboard an alien spacecraft, I would be like, so excited.

I would be like, you know, wow, this is just, you know, asking them, what is this? What does this do? And, you know, wow. And looking all around and everything, but. You know, I have interviewed a lot of people who have had these type of experiences and the reason why they're so frightening to people is because They're usually paralyzed and they're usually completely taken against their will and they they seem to [01:33:00] have no control over what's going on So I think that's where a lot of the fear comes in with these experiences is that people don't seem to have the ability to to have conscious, um voluntary control over the experience 

Amina: That definitely sounds terrifying, although, like, in theory, you know, it seems cool, but I think if I was actually there, I would be freaking out.

David: Yeah. It's hard to know how you react until it actually happened. 

Amina: Yeah. In your experience, how do you classify, like, Dreams versus out of body experiences like are they the same thing? Are they different? What do you think? Yeah, I know that a 

David: lot There's a lot of controversy around that that some people Some some people think that they're that they're very different, but they're certainly they're unquestionably related in some way I mean one of the main differences is that people often report having out of body experiences that begin when they're awake Not what they're when they're asleep, but they do often happen in bed You Uh, it's very common.

They can happen with, um, with near death [01:34:00] experiences. I can, I can share something about my, my own experience with both that, uh, might give you some insight into how I, how I think about this. When I was, when I was writing Dreaming Wide Awake, I was experimenting with a lot of different techniques, and I had a number of, um, experiences with, uh, with sleep paralysis.

As you know, when, when humans or other animals sleep, their, their body goes into a state of paralysis so that we don't act out the behaviors in our dreams. And, and sometimes when, when you wake up, um, there's often a momentary transition period where sometimes you're, you're, that sleep paralysis remains in your body, but your, your mind starts to wake up.

And for many people, this is a very, um, Frightening experience, and not only because you can't move your body, but also because there's usually some element of REM sleep going on, some element of dreaming continuing, and so people often will see a menacing figure walking towards them, you know, or something sitting on their chest, they [01:35:00] feel like they're very vulnerable because they can't move, and it's that It's a very frightening experience.

So I, I had a lot of, uh, experiences with sleep paralysis, and at first they, they were very, very frightening to me, and I tried an experiment. I, you know, I wanted to see what happened if I, you know, if I explored the state. The next time it happened, after thinking this, I, you know, I was able to explore it, and I realized that even though I couldn't move my body, when I would try to move my body, there was like a ghostly appendage, or, you know, some kind of phantom limb that would move in response to my, attempt to move my arm or my leg.

And, uh, and I realized that if I would, uh, would concentrate on that, I can, I could shift my sense of identity from, uh, from my physical body to this, uh, phantom body or this, uh, this dream body or, uh, or astral body, you know, if that's how you want to term it, but the more attention I paid to the, to the astral or dream limbs, the, um, more ability I had to sort of [01:36:00] separate myself.

Okay. And I would this would could lead to to an out of body experience where I would then feel like I moved out of my my body and I was now and now in my bedroom as a sort of separate spirit. But but oddly whenever this whenever I would have this experience, the room that I was in, you know, it would look like my bedroom.

But. There would often be something a little bit different about it, you know, like maybe there'd be like an extra window over here, or you know, the door was like kind of in a different place, or the furniture was, you know, an extra piece of furniture or something was kind of odd about it. So it was, I was never quite sure if this was, you know, an actual, um, I was actually leaving my body and looking at the room from this perspective, or if I was creating a simulation in my mind of the room, and then further experiments with this would, would lead to, When I was in that state where I was, uh, having an out of body experience in my room, if I would, you know, walk out the front door or, you know, float through the walls, um, this would then, you know, morph or evolve into a lucid dream.

So in my own experience, they were, they were very connected where I [01:37:00] had out of body experiences that would, that would lead to lucid dreams. So, uh, so I think that they're, they're very connected. Um, I, I researched it from my book to try to, to try to learn more. There have been, um, there's been some, some research done to see, you know, if people can report things that they, they, they weren't able to see, you know, otherwise from their out of body experience.

And there's been, there's been some, some evidence that this, this might be possible. Many people reported during, uh, near death experiences. and uh, Sam, Sam Parnia, the physician, uh, was very interested in near death experiences. What, what he did was he, um, he put messages in rooms and hospitals where, where people would sometimes, uh, undergo cardiac arrest and then question some of these people afterwards, you know, who had out of body experiences to see if they were able to, uh, to uh, to see if they were able to, you know, read these, uh, these messages.

And I think there was, there was some, uh, mild, uh, indication that this might be possible, but not a whole [01:38:00] lot of evidence for that. So it's, it still, it remains a mystery, whether, you know, out of body experiences are, you know, are, are, um, give us the ability to To view material reality and from from an alternative viewpoint or whether they're simulations in our mind and and most people believe that lucid dreams are simulations and our mind.

That's why, you know, that's why we're free to do whatever we want in a lucid dream without the consequences of physical reality. But then, you know, as I mentioned earlier, then there's, you know, possibilities of shared lucid dreaming. And so there may be, you know, another reality to this. So it just leads to really to more questions.

And I don't really have any firm or solid beliefs about this, but I'd be curious to know what you think. 

Amina: Yeah, I mean, I really honestly agree with you. I think that you brought up some really valid and interesting points that just make me think so much about this. And I mean, I do personally believe that it's possible.

for a soul to leave the physical body and explore other dimensions. But I'm totally open to being wrong [01:39:00] about that, you know? So I don't really know either way. That's just what I feel intuitively. And I do believe that some, not all lucid dreams are necessarily out of body experiences. I kind of, for my personal.

Criteria, you know, everyone kind of defines things differently and that's okay, but I kind of see out of body experiences as like an umbrella term because not all out of body experiences, like you mentioned, come from being asleep or in REM sleep. Some are from being fully awake. or meditation or hypnosis and psychedelics even.

And I've had out of body experiences where I was not asleep. So, I fully remember the feeling of exiting and entering my body. And sure, maybe it's just some sort of hallucination that my mind created. And I'm okay with that, but I really feel like there's just more to it. And yeah, I'm excited to see where the science goes.

There's so many interesting anecdotes and stories that I hear every day, just by talking to people and, you know, reading the internet [01:40:00] that are just, you know, not coincidence. I do think that there's more out there than just a dream or just a hallucination as some people say. 

David: Yeah, yeah, I really, I hate that phrase, just a dream, you know, that our parents tell us when we wake up from a nightmare as a child, it was, honey, it was just a dream, when I think that, you know, dreams are such profound states of consciousness, and I, you know, the metaphor that I like to use for myself as to whether a dream is taking place, you know, just inside of our brain, or whether it's in some kind of larger collective sphere, is like how your computer You can be, you know, can, can be hooked up to the internet or not, you know, if it's not hooked up to the internet, it's just dealing with its own, you know, the memory system inside the computer.

But if it's hooked up to the internet, then, you know, then it's, it's in communication with all the other computers. So I think that it may be, it may be a similar situation with our brains that, you know, sometimes in some dreams, you know, we're just sort of staying localized inside of our brain. And, uh, [01:41:00] other times we, uh, we connect to a larger, uh, collective space where we can hook up with other dreamers and possibly other entities and other dimensions.

Amina: Yes. I love that analogy. It made me really happy because I totally can see that it makes so much sense. And yeah, computers are just really good metaphors for the brain in general. And I think a lot of times these metaphors is, is kind of some of the ways that we have to explain reality is through analogies and metaphors, because these things that are, you know, applied on a smaller scale can also be.

Kind of similar on a bigger scale. So I, I fully think that that makes a lot of sense, honestly. So what are some things that you like to do in a lucid dream? Like, do you have anything recently that you've been wanting to try or anything? that you like to do while lucid? 

David: Well, you know, I, I've, I've, I've had so many lucid dreams in my life and I've had great opportunities to experiment with them.

So I, I sort of systematically worked through trying almost everything that I've wanted to try in a lucid dream. You know, as, as I mentioned, you know, the first things are the [01:42:00] century things, you know, the first, Flying and sex and all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, interactions with the dream characters and then, and then interactions with the intelligence behind the dream itself, those different types of states, but you know, in my, in my latest list of dreams, you know, in the past couple of months, um, what I've been doing that I hadn't really been doing before is I, as I find myself teaching other, other characters in the dream, um, how to, how to lose the dream.

Um, I, I, um, I find myself. Telling the other characters, you know, this is this is a dream right now, you know, we're having a dream Of course, they immediately disagree with you, but but I've been showing them, you know, the reality test that I mentioned earlier I'll say, you know here take a look at the title on this book and you know Look at it and look away and and tell me what you see and and I noticed that my dream characters are Astonished to discover that the title on the book changes and they often agree with me like wow, you know, you're right We're in a dream right now And then I teach them, you know, how to fly and I [01:43:00] teach them, um, how to, you know, kind of go through, you know, walls and objects and, uh, and all the different things that one can do in a lucid dream.

So, so that's really what I've been kind of enjoying, uh, lately is, um, is, is teaching other, other, uh, characters how to lucid dream. And I, and I still, you know, still enjoy. To this day, enjoy, you know, what I, what I love to do. My first one, which is flying. I mean, nothing really beats flying. You know, I still, still love doing it.

There's just such great, great excitement every time I do it. And I always wake up feeling, feeling great from it. It has a lucid dreaming always has a kind of a antidepressant effect on me. I always wake up, always wake up feeling great from a lucid dream. And, uh, my, uh, my friend and colleague, uh, Lana Sackwild, uh, wrote a scientific paper specifically about that, um, she did a study where she looked at, uh, lucid dreamers and how they felt when they woke up and, uh, and the, uh, antidepressant effect that it had.

And I'm sure you're also aware that it has, uh, many people report, uh, healing abilities when people try to [01:44:00] heal themselves in a, in a lucid dream, oftentimes that'll, that'll carry over into their, um, into their physical state. 

Amina: Yes, definitely. All those things are amazing. Um, flying is just so fun. Something that we really can't do in physical, so it's so freeing and amazing.

And yeah, the healing, I've done that as well. Like I've had some lucid dreams that have pulled me just one single lucid dream that I intentionally used. To heal myself and pull me out of some really tough emotional spots that I have been struggling with for months at the time. And then I had one dream that literally sucked it all out of me.

So yeah, it's interesting how dreams can have that effect and not just emotionally. I, like you said, I think it can help with physical things and just overall helping us towards. The path to self mastery, as Steven LaBerge said. 

David: Yeah, yeah. And also, you sent me a list, I think, a hundred things you can do in a lucid dream, and I thought that was a fantastic list.

There was much on it I had tried, and there was [01:45:00] some great ideas in there that I hadn't thought of before. So I really loved that list you sent. 

Amina: Thanks. Yeah, I've been working on it for years and a lot of my friends will contribute to it sometimes. So if you or anybody listening has tried something that's not on there, you know, let me know and we can add it.

It's a ongoing collective list. 

David (2): Yeah, absolutely. 

Amina: One closing question that I like to ask is, um, Any piece of advice or anything on your heart to people listening, maybe people that are new to your books or new to dream work in general, anything that might help them along the way? 

David: Um, well, just, you know, I think that really the, probably the single most important thing to, to do if you, if you're interested in dreaming, if you're interested in lucid dreaming, if you're interested in psychedelic states of consciousness, is to start keeping a dream journal and to write down your dreams every time you wake up.

Feel like you don't remember them, you know, when you wake up, write down the feeling that you had or the emotion that you had when you wake up. And the more you do this, you know, the more you'll [01:46:00] start to be able to bring back, you know, sometimes you'll just remember, you know, one little tiny snippet of the dream, but then after you write it down, you know, you'll suddenly realize it's attached to something else, and they start to come back.

So, so I think keeping a journal of your, of your dream experiences, uh, is absolutely essential if you want to explore the space. If you have psychedelic experiences, I think also writing them down and recording them as well, and looking for correlations between, you know, what, you know, your unconscious mind might be trying to communicate.

Uh, to you, uh, through your, your psychedelic experiences, or through your dreams, you know, or through, um, whatever type of, uh, altered states you're, you're exploring, because I, I think that you're, you know, you're, you're unconscious is constantly trying to communicate with you and send you messages, and, uh, and most people, uh, don't pay attention, so, so I think that, uh, that by, uh, paying attention and, uh, recording these messages, Things we can gain a great deal of insight into our, into our own minds, into our relationships with other people and, uh, and, uh, the vast possibilities that, uh, that we have, uh, [01:47:00] available to us, uh, both in the, in the dream space and in our, our physical reality.

Amina: Yeah. Beautifully said. I love that. I think it's great advice. Yeah. I mean, it's been so. Amazing talking to you and just, you know, becoming friends, getting to know you. Thank you so much for chatting and, uh, we'll definitely stay in touch. 

David: Thank you so much, Amina. It's always a pleasure to talk to you and this has been great fun and let's do it again sometime soon.