I have had many lucid dreams, however I don’t have any control over when they happen. They usually happen 2 or 3 times a month, although there was one week when I had lucid dreams every night. In the beginning my lucid dreams were always in the presence of a man. He taught me how to fly in my dreams. Later he would meet me in my dreams and talk to me about things that happened to me during the day. Often times I would awake in the morning with a euphoric sense of well being and a tingling feeling in my body that lasted all day.

Even though I was aware of my dream state I felt that the man had control in my dreams more than I did. One time I encountered a different man. He was wearing all black and I didn’t like the way he looked. He looked like a demon. I asked him his name and he turned to me with a smirk and said, “that’d be Yog Sototh.” Immediately I was sitting up wide awake in my bed and my heart was pounding as if I had been running.

Lately my dreams have me flying to different places. I’m alone now because I sort of asked the man who taught me how to fly to leave. I wanted to have control over my own dreams. I still don’t though. I can’t go to sleep and will myself to have a lucid dream. Once however, I was awake, and suddenly felt a dream coming on so I got in my bed and had a lucid dream. I’d like to learn to control my dreaming. Also do you think these people I encounter are spirits or what?

--Signed Robin

Hi Robin -

Yours is a fascinating account of lucid dreaming. While some people certainly experience lucid dreams with much greater frequency than others, I must say that the lucid dreamer who can will him or herself to be lucid on a given night is quite rare - though I have met a few, and read reports of others who perform well in sleep labs.

Your last question always is difficult to answer, for anyone. Many people think dreamers who claim to have out of body experiences (OBE’s) actually are only experiencing vivid lucid dreams. Much evidence tends to support this. When OBE’ers attempt to perform remote viewing of target locations, for example, the results often are disappointing. A task may be to leave one’s body and open an envelope that has been sealed and left at a pre-arranged location with specific information or wording inside. The results often do not show any correlation statistically greater than guessing. On the other hand, maybe they really are leaving their bodies and maybe the time-space continuum is a bit different on the astral plane, and so there would be distortions in the viewing of whatever information was requested to be obtained. Certainly if some people got a handle on this time-space ability we would have a lot more OBE’ers and lucid dreamers who were lottery ticket winners! All you would have to do is take a look at tomorrow's newspaper today, and then bet the winning numbers! (Should we hold the experiment ourselves, here on the Ask the Dream Doctor website??)

I certainly believe in precognitive experience and in communication with friends, family and relatives through dreams, and I believe dreams are excellent locations in which to make contact with our spirit guides. Perhaps in your next dream you should ask your old dream guide for illumination on who he is and what his role has been, and how he relates to you. We would all be curious to hear back what he says…