Méthode d'induction d'hallucinations contrôlées(controlled induction of hallucinations)

As I said in "How to learn conscious dreaming", learning how to induce controlled hallucinations by focussing your attention on informational objects in darkness is a powerful tool in learning how to enter voluntarily into a state of conscious dreaming. Specific hallucinations are difficult to generate as this means that you learn to specifically activate, metabolically, a memory area where the informational object you want to retrieve is stored in an inactive form (due to low metabolism). Unspecific hallucinations are easier to generate because the natural tendency of consciousness and thought is to evolve through MHV (motifs homologiquement variants, or homologous patterns). Generating a specific hallucination (or, more precisely, a disattenuation) requires voluntarily maintaining the metabolism of a memory zone where you want to retrieve something (say the image of a rose) to a level where your thought does not radiate through MHVs.

Focussing your attention on darkness

The easiest way to start is to sit quietly in darkness for an hour or two and exercise yourself. What you need first is to observe this darkness and analyse it:

What do you see in this darkness?
Is darkness "flat" or three dimensional?

In the beginning darkness will appear to be flat, with no depth. You will see ever-changing phospenes. Now if you try to concentrate your visual attention on an informational object, such as a rose, you will notice that it is difficult for you to pinpoint "where" this rose is. The attenuated image of the rose does not appear instantly in front of your eyes! Even children can notice this phenomenon very clearly. The rose seems, at first, somewhere else like, "behind your head" for instance. With more work (children under 8 can do this very easily as compared to "adults"!) you will succeed in "moving" your rose from "behind your head" to "in front of you". This rose will look like a faint transparent object in darkness. You can just about distinguish its contour as a difference of contrast in darkness: darkness starts to be less dark! What you can notice, also, is that you cannot properly focus your attention on this rose for more than a fraction of a second, as the rose will disappear to be replaced by something with a similar pattern, because of "MHV jumps". At that time you will start to notice that darkness becomes three-dimensional instead of flat.

Reiterated disattenuated images

When you learn to focus your attention onto darkness you will reach a pre-hallucinogenic step which is the step of reiterated images. Such reiterated images can also be observed under hallucinogens (or "disattenuating molecules").

Reiteration seems to always precede the generation of complex images by the brain. Reiterations express somethingfundamental about the workings of the CNS and how it works in order to synthesise complex three-dimensional images. My examination of this phenomenon leads me to think that the famous Dutch artist Escher had pre-hallucinations of this sort and that he drew them as art.

Reiterated images are always in rotation

This can be observed either with this method or under the influence of disattenuating molecules, such as psilocine, LSD, etc. The rotation of the reiterated image is slow, perhaps about 5 seconds per gyration. Whilerotating, these images can change into other reiterated rotating images. This is very beautiful to observe as now you can also start to seefaint colours in these splendid and intricate images.

Synthesis of complex three-dimensional images

This step comes after the step of the reiterative images. When you start to see such images they are at first evanescent. Focussing your attention on them makes them more clear. Things now start to acquire beautiful hues. These colours tend to change if you do nothing to keep them. This tendency is the same for those images you can see. They change through MHVs, i.e. by following a rule of pattern modification.

Focussing your attention on known or unknown things gives different results!

Here is something interesting: if you focus your attention on, say, the face of a person you know, it will be relatively easy to keep a static image of this face in front of your "eyes". However, if you focus your attention on an unknown face, you will notice that it constantly changes into other faces,through incessant MHVs jumps !

Inducing rotation of an informational object

Something which I and some children have noticed (without any interference) is that if you want to to set a visual image in rotation, you cannot change its speed of rotation continuously. Rotation always jumps in a quantum manner from one observed "speed" to another. The children of some friends of mine first noticed this phenomenon by themselves in Tahiti (French Polynesia) in 1985, when I asked them just to observe darkness!

The most important thing in order to achieve conscious (="lucid") dream is to learn, like in meditation, how tofocus your attention on informational objects (imaginary hallucinatory-like visual images, for instance) or on after-images.

You can do this 3 different ways:

Focussing your attention directly on informational objects with your eyes closed.
Focussing your attention first on an external object, like the flame of a candle, then closing your eyes and focussing on the external object's after-image.
For instance, you can focus your attention on the light of a candle for about 1 or 2 minutes, then close your eyes and try to keep the after-image of the candlelight as long as possible into your consciousness. While doing this concentrate and observe the regular variations of colours of this image until its extinction. Write the sequence of colour variation.
Using a flashlight to produce an observable after-image.
This method is faster than the exercise with a candle. Take a black and white photograph, for instance, or your hands. Put these objects at a distance of about 30cm from your eyes. Illuminate them with a strong and brief impulse of a flashlight.Then observe.

You will see rapidly a very clear after-image of your photograph, etc. Focus your attention on it. Examine the variations in colours with time and write them down. Try to "move" your imaginary gaze on the photograph without moving your real eyes.

Repeat these exercises, in a dark room, whenever you have time. Slowly you will notice that your dream recalls become more vivid and informative.

Good luck in your quest for conscious dreams!

Claude Rifat