Back in 2013, having read about lucid dreams but never having experienced one myself, I ordered a copy of Stephen LaBerge's Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life from Amazon. If you are not familiar with lucid dreaming, Wikipedia describes it as follows:
- A lucid dream is any dream during which the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming. During lucid dreaming, the dreamer may be able to exert some degree of control over the dream characters, narrative, and environment.
I eagerly started reading the book only to be quickly disappointed - it listed a number of techniques to master and exercises to work on to experience a lucid dream, which sounded too much like hard work. I tossed the book on my bedside table and promptly forgot all about it, or so I thought. Some program in my mind had obviously not dropped the matter, and a week later, I had my very first (and only) lucid dream!
The dream started off like any other, in that I was not aware I was dreaming. In the dream, I was in an aircraft taking off from a valley set amidst mountains covered with thick, impenetrable tropical forests. The sky was ominous and heavy with dark, low clouds. The setting sun shone from below the clouds near the horizon, casting a golden glow on the scene. The plane lifted off and climbed to a couple of hundred feet, only to dip and start plummeting towards the ground. "Oh no, we are going to crash" I thought, staring out the window as the ground below got closer and closer. Suddenly, I realized that everything was moving in slow motion.
An aspiring lucid dreamer is supposed to train their mind to watch for anything out of the ordinary while dreaming. This then cues them to wake up within the dream and continue dreaming, but lucidly. I'd never comprehended how one might achieve this, but now here I was, seeing everything move in slow motion and having an Aha! moment "I am dreaming!!!"
I was now fully awake within my dream, and in control of it. The plane touched down like a feather. I chose to fly out through the roof of the plane, passing through it with ease. I floated up in the air, exhilarated. I decided to explore the giant mountain looming in front of me and flew up its slopes. At about 4,000 feet up, I decided to manifest a tropical village in a jungle setting, complete with quaint little straw huts and a stream flowing through it. A Balinese village, I decided for no special reason, though I have never been to Bali. I played around like a child in this idyllic setting, flying and swooping around the village. After a while, tiring of sustaining the lucid dream, I decided to wake up...and the dream ended.
Fast forward to 2016. It was a Sunday afternoon, and my friend Sven and I were sitting in my living room and discussing meditation. Sven is 6' 5" tall, a practical Dutchman and an MIT engineer, and not really given to esoteric notions. Our conversation turned to alternate states of consciousness and I casually brought up the topic of lucid dreams. Sven paused for a moment, and said "My dad was an anthropologist back in Holland, and I recall him mentioning an Indonesian tribe that used to engage in mass, group lucid dreaming".
Which got me wondering why I picked Bali as the setting of my lucid dreaming adventure versus any other place on earth. Tickets to Bali, anyone?
P.S.: "Bali Ha'i", also spelled "Bali Hai", is a show tune from the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. The name refers to a mystical island, visible on the horizon but not reachable, and was originally inspired by Espiritu Santo's sighting of Ambae island in Vanuatu, where author James Michener was stationed in World War II.
