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Rating: 
Summary: exploring our dreams
Review: A friend once confided in me that sometimes he realizes he is dreaming and can direct the course of the dream as it occurs. He calls this a "lucid" dream. That has always intrigued me, since I often awaken with the threads of a dream still in memory and often wonder what the experience would have been like with the added awareness that I was 'only dreaming'.Janice Brooks and Jay Vogelsong along with a third participant, their friend Ruth, are lucid dreamers. Their book is a well-researched and referenced analysis of how dreams are constructed and what controls the course of a dream. It is interspersed with the authors' own dream experiences as illustrations. For example, the chapter on the Suggestion Theory of Dreaming, the authors write: "...noises from the external world can also find their way into dreams...Such invading noises often become modified into other, related sounds that better suit the dream context, as in the time Jay's snores translated into the sound of chalk scraping on a blackboard in Janice's school dream..." In another chapter, Jay describes the process of dream awareness. He remarks that..."it takes skill to observe the workings of the dream and participate in the plot simultaneously...". What was even more striking were the examples of the authors' dream experiments: "...one can easily devise and perform lucid experiments to test dream memory itself...in our respective lucid dreams, all three of us could remember basic facts about our lives. We could state our names, addresses, employment, ages.....Sometimes, though, we ended up reciting outdated information, as Janice did with an old address and telephone number because she happened to be at the former house in the dream..." I'm still in the process of reading this book, but so far it has been an illuminating and thought-provoking experience.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Read!
Review: I haven't finished the book yet but so far it is a great read! This book is a great help in understanding dreaming on a whole new level. Lucid dreaming is something that many are interested in and now have a resource to learn much more about. The authors share many of their own lucid dreams and experiences throughout.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent naturalized approach to dreaming.
Review: In the naturalistic tradition of Hobson, Crick and Flanagan, the authors tackle dream formation and "lucid" control with an intelligence and style that is refreshing amid today's cacaphony of hype and varying agendas. In probably the best lay exposition of REM sleep since Dick McLeester's WECOME TO THE MAGIC THEATRE in 1976, these amateur dream explorers map the terrain of the sleeping brain with an excellence worthy of the prizes given to the best sanctioned "academic" publications. The book is as good in its specialized area as Steve Pinker's was to the mind in general in HOW THE MIND WORKS. As in McLeester's book, THE CONSCIOUS EXPLORATION OF DREAMING takes a balanced and fair approach to lucid dream potentialities and dream control, demonstrating that we always control our dreams to some extent through suggestion and that control and dream behavior are highly customized to each dream individual scenario. The book is largely anti-psychoanalytical and attemps to show that rather than constituting symbolic distortions or affective resolutions, dreams simply are build-as-you go situations which we create in response to random brain activation. There is an existential "throwness" element to them; we are suddenly in Act II without an Act I. If we dream of panicing during a school exam, it's because we actaully "haven't" prepared for the test and we should panic, given the situation. No need to involve the Id and Superego in explaining the story. I've been researching dreams and lucid dreams for over thirty tears, and this is surely one of the best tracts on the subject that I have seen in that time. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent naturalized approach to dreaming.
Review: In the naturalistic tradition of Hobson, Crick and Flanagan, the authors tackle dream formation and "lucid" control with an intelligence and style that is refreshing amid today's cacaphony of hype and varying agendas. In probably the best lay exposition of REM sleep since Dick McLeester's WECOME TO THE MAGIC THEATRE in 1976, these amateur dream explorers map the terrain of the sleeping brain with an excellence worthy of the prizes given to the best sanctioned "academic" publications. The book is as good in its specialized area as Steve Pinker's was to the mind in general in HOW THE MIND WORKS. As in McLeester's book, THE CONSCIOUS EXPLORATION OF DREAMING takes a balanced and fair approach to lucid dream potentialities and dream control, demonstrating that we always control our dreams to some extent through suggestion and that control and dream behavior are highly customized to each dream individual scenario. The book is largely anti-psychoanalytical and attemps to show that rather than constituting symbolic distortions or affective resolutions, dreams simply are build-as-you go situations which we create in response to random brain activation. There is an existential "throwness" element to them; we are suddenly in Act II without an Act I. If we dream of panicing during a school exam, it's because we actaully "haven't" prepared for the test and we should panic, given the situation. No need to involve the Id and Superego in explaining the story. I've been researching dreams and lucid dreams for over thirty tears, and this is surely one of the best tracts on the subject that I have seen in that time. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A Lucid Account of Lucid Dreaming
Review: Lucid dreaming first came to my attention when it formed the basis of a story in - where else - an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. I had heard the term before but hadn't understood what it meant. Subsequently, an arch-skeptic of my acquaintance called for support in a debate he was having with the members of an Internet newsgroup called alt.out-of-body. I lurked for a while before joining in the discussion and was surprised to find a group of people were reporting out-of-body experiences and lucid dreaming, some on a regular basis. Although I felt that a number of the explanations being offered were rather fanciful, the reports of the experiences themselves seemed genuine. This was fascinating because it meant that a part of the human population were having dream, or dream-like, experiences that others like myself had never known. I was curious to read more, so I ordered it forthwith via the Internet. This is a substantial tome which, in paperback, runs to nearly 350 pages, if you include the detailed annotation, extensive bibliography and index, which are the proper appendices of any work which aspires to scientific credibility. I mention scientific credibility because, unlike some of what is written about this subject, the authors have adhered to the ideal of scientific objectivity. Although written for a lay audience, they examine the research and thinking in this field in considerable detail, and they have been scrupulously fair in giving the various theories due and proper consideration, even those that some might consider more speculative. In one aspect, though, they have a considerable advantage over other researchers: they have experienced lucid dreams and OBEs themselves. The human mind and/or brain has been described as the most complex object in the known universe. Imagine trying to discover how a computer works from scratch: there is no manual, no help files and, initially, no knowledge of what it is made from and how it is powered. Even worse, it is associated with baffling phenomena such as consciousness. Imagine how much of a help it would be if you could think as a computer thinks, if you could learn about it from the inside, as it were. This is especially true of an inaccessible phenomenon like dreaming, the activity of the conscious mind while the body is asleep. Janice and Jay are, therefore, in the rare and privileged position, for scientists, of being able to observe and experiment on themselves, of having a more intimate acquaintance with their subject-matter than is afforded to most researchers. They have put this insight to the best possible use in this book, which I would recommend as the first choice for anyone who wants to learn more about lucid dreaming, and I can only endorse the words of one of the foremost researchers in this field, J Allan Hobson, when he writes in the Foreword: "Brooks and Vogelsong are true scientists in both their adherence to value-free description and their state-of-the-art interpretation of their data. The Conscious Exploration of Dreaming is a healthy antidote to the abundant New Age hyperbole on this important and serious subject."
Rating:
Summary: A Lucid Account of Lucid Dreaming
Review: Lucid dreaming first came to my attention when it formed the basis of a story in - where else - an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. I had heard the term before but hadn't understood what it meant. Subsequently, an arch-skeptic of my acquaintance called for support in a debate he was having with the members of an Internet newsgroup called alt.out-of-body. I lurked for a while before joining in the discussion and was surprised to find a group of people were reporting out-of-body experiences and lucid dreaming, some on a regular basis. Although I felt that a number of the explanations being offered were rather fanciful, the reports of the experiences themselves seemed genuine. This was fascinating because it meant that a part of the human population were having dream, or dream-like, experiences that others like myself had never known. I was curious to read more, so I ordered it forthwith via the Internet. This is a substantial tome which, in paperback, runs to nearly 350 pages, if you include the detailed annotation, extensive bibliography and index, which are the proper appendices of any work which aspires to scientific credibility. I mention scientific credibility because, unlike some of what is written about this subject, the authors have adhered to the ideal of scientific objectivity. Although written for a lay audience, they examine the research and thinking in this field in considerable detail, and they have been scrupulously fair in giving the various theories due and proper consideration, even those that some might consider more speculative. In one aspect, though, they have a considerable advantage over other researchers: they have experienced lucid dreams and OBEs themselves. The human mind and/or brain has been described as the most complex object in the known universe. Imagine trying to discover how a computer works from scratch: there is no manual, no help files and, initially, no knowledge of what it is made from and how it is powered. Even worse, it is associated with baffling phenomena such as consciousness. Imagine how much of a help it would be if you could think as a computer thinks, if you could learn about it from the inside, as it were. This is especially true of an inaccessible phenomenon like dreaming, the activity of the conscious mind while the body is asleep. Janice and Jay are, therefore, in the rare and privileged position, for scientists, of being able to observe and experiment on themselves, of having a more intimate acquaintance with their subject-matter than is afforded to most researchers. They have put this insight to the best possible use in this book, which I would recommend as the first choice for anyone who wants to learn more about lucid dreaming, and I can only endorse the words of one of the foremost researchers in this field, J Allan Hobson, when he writes in the Foreword: "Brooks and Vogelsong are true scientists in both their adherence to value-free description and their state-of-the-art interpretation of their data. The Conscious Exploration of Dreaming is a healthy antidote to the abundant New Age hyperbole on this important and serious subject."
Rating:
Summary: The Conscious Exploration of Dreaming
Review: Many people can become aware that they are dreaming while they are dreaming - they can dream lucidly. The Conscious Exploration of Dreaming, by my husband Jay Vogelsong and myself, details observations and experiments from our own extensive lucid dream accounts and places them into the framework of a relatively little-known perceptual theory of dreaming. We critique many popular notions about lucid dreaming and dreaming in general, and attempt to integrate our ideas with modern sleep and dream research. Though laboratory research has largely superseded psychoanalytic thought in explaining dream generation, ordinary people may have difficulty relating such research to their own personal experiences with dreaming. We hope that our book will help to bridge this gap.
Rating:
Summary: Based on personal experiments and research.
Review: Most books about Lucid Dreams are found in the New Age section of the book store. If this has stopped you from exploring the fascinating world of Lucid Dreaming then I highly recommend The Conscious Exploration of Dreaming. Janice and Jay Volgelsong have written a voluminous book about Lucid Dreams. They examine popular scientific and occult theory with a critical eye. Heavily referenced, their book is grounded in their own personal research, experience and observation. If you have been curious about where dreams come from you will find satisfying answers in their book.
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