The Key to the Kingdom
What if I told you that you already possess the key to unlock the secrets of the world's great Wisdom Traditions? What if I told you that the quest for the Holy Grail begins no further away than your own bedroom? What if this key is no further than your own pillow?
This book is about how to unlock the wonders of Conscious Sleep. Although we all pass through the same door of sleep, each of us has a unique way of unlocking its mysteries. In this book, I'm going to help you discover your unique key to unlocking those mysteries. We're going to take this journey together. Lucky for us the oneironauts, mystics and sages who came before us were kind enough to leave scattered fragments of maps, road signs, and landmarks to assist us. My work is to synthesize some of these maps and methods into a practical system. I call this system Subliminal Cognition Training (SCT).
I offer a practical approach to the full-spectrum of Conscious Sleep. This book isn't just about learning Lucid Dreaming or Astral Projection. Rather, it demonstrates the relationships among all aspects of Conscious Sleep, especially as expressed in the religions and mystical traditions of the world. This approach has profound implications for meditators especially...
I've practiced many different forms of meditation for twenty-five out of my forty years on this planet. Until I discovered the connection between meditation and Conscious Sleep, I was always somewhat dissatisfied with meditation. Not that I wasn't seeing results from my meditation practices. I was! But I wasn't interested in just becoming more mindful of the tip of the iceberg, as it were; I wanted to become mindful of the greater portion of the iceberg submerged in the murky depths of my subconscious mind. In short, I wanted the light of my awareness to remain lit in all conceivable states of awareness, perhaps even in death. Meditation simply wasn't scratching that itch...
Eventually, I began supplementing my meditation practice with Tai Chi Chuan, Qigong (energy-work), and various forms of Yoga. Each of these disciplines conferred their own unique benefits, to be sure, but I didn't see them as being truly related to each other in any specific way. As the years went by, however, the relationship shared by these disciplines began to reveal itself to me. This taught me that the ability to carry meditation through waking and sleep states is the key to transforming meditation into something you are, rather than merely something you do. After all, if falling asleep is all it takes to destroy your meditative awareness then something's missing! And the same rule applies to, say, the insights that emerge in your nightly dreams:
If waking up in the morning is all it takes to forget those insights, what good are they?
Whether it's Astral Projection, Lucid Dreaming, Dream Recall, Dream Incubation, etc., for any of these to become accessible and enduring traits of your consciousness, the subconscious and conscious regions of your bodymind must "agree" to make that happen. In other words, conscious intention must align with unconscious capacity, and the best way to accomplish this is to carry your intention into the Waking, Dreaming and Dreamless states of consciousness.
I often refer to Sri Ramana Maharshi's famous quote to illustrate the significance of this point:
If it's not still present while you're in deep sleep then it's not real.
It took roughly sixteen years after that breakthrough for me to truly uncover the links among Meditation, Qigong, Yoga, Lucid Dreaming and Astral Projection. The strange thing is, I wasn't actively seeking a connection among them and, although I knew that such a connection existed, I was practicing each of these skills for purposes that had little to do with one another. In retrospect, I often wonder if I was subconsciously aware of their connection all along, as it seems something of a happy accident that I stumbled upon it. At any rate, after so many years of consistent practice, these seemingly discreet disciplines somehow merged into one unified skill-set.
It came as a shock to me! But after some time had passed, and I slowly became familiar with these connections, their relationship (reliance even!) made perfect sense. In this book, I'm going to share some of these discoveries with you so that you might apply them to your own quest. In Behind the Veil: The Complete Guide to Conscious Sleep, I laid the groundwork for balanced and healthy cultivation. In that book, we learned the core module of the SCT system—the 120-Days Curriculum—and by now you should be nurturing a daily meditation practice, keeping a thorough dream journal, uncovering and decoding your dream "language," channeling intensity, and aligning yourself with the tides of Nature. In this book I'm going to expand on that core module. This work essentially represents a form of "Three-Body Cross-Training" in which you'll learn how to successfully navigate the five Veils of SCT simultaneously.
The exercises in this book are in no particular order of importance, save that I tried to pick up where I left off in Behind the Veil. New readers of my work should consult that book (specifically the 120-Days Curriculum) regarding the order of training. As we each have our own unique personalities, it's impossible (and deplorable) to make rules for everyone. Of course, there are universal guidelines from which anyone can benefit, and SCT is an attempt to synthesize those guidelines; but there are no absolutes when it comes to the nuances in how one learns and uses these skills.
The techniques in this book are meant to be approached in a playful manner. Although the exercises demand total commitment, the order in which they're presented isn't as important as your decision to practice them. Each of the techniques in the Three-Body Fitness Program are complete in themselves, as they were created and synthesized to exercise the Gross, Subtle and Causal bodies simultaneously. In this way you'll learn to traverse the Five Primary Veils in a single session, whereas in Book One you learned how to access them one at a time. Thus, you can start with any technique of your choosing. There's no absolute order to the Program.
Here are a few examples of what you'll learn from this book:
A comprehensive system for learning how to have full-sensory Vivid and Lucid Dreams.
A discussion of the Dos and Don'ts of Astral Projection.
How to convert physical movements into etheric and astral ones using Qigong (Chinese Yoga) principles.
Methods for communicating with your subconscious mind and Higher Self.
How to use the Seven Categories of Dream to Enhance your Dream Recall.
The relationship of methodologies from Vedanta, Tantra, Tai Chi, Vision Quests, the Western Magickal Tradition, and Psychedelic states to Conscious Sleep.
The relationship of bioelectrical brainwaves to the practice of Qigong and Astral Projection.
How to navigate the Five Primary Veils of Consciousness.
A "Three Body" Fitness Regimen aimed at strengthening the Physical, Etheric, Emotional, Astral and Causal bodies.
While you can read this book from the first to the last page, feel free to pick a topic or exercise that interests you and dig in.
This book is divided into three parts. Part One deals primarily with the foundation of the SCT system. We'll discuss the Art, Science and Spirituality of Conscious Sleep with an eye toward a quick recap of Book One. Because of their importance, I've also reintroduced some of the core Taoist practices taught in Book One, but with additional information on how you might advance that aspect of your training.
In Part Two we discuss the Four Pillars of SCT. However, Vivid Dreaming, Lucid Dreaming, Pellucid Dreaming and Astral Projection have been listed in the reverse order of the 120-Days Curriculum in Book One. This has been done in the spirit of picking up where Book One left off. In Book One, we went up the ladder. Here we go back down. This has been done to emphasize that your development as a Veiler is more like a spiral staircase than a rigid ladder. So when I say that we're going "up" and "down," I really mean that we're spiraling up and down. It often happens that a discovery made at an advanced level of practice sheds new light upon a previous one. The process of refinement has no upper-limit, and is anything but straightforward.
Part Three deals with some of the more peripheral aspects of Conscious Sleep. We'll talk about the role of sexuality and the magickal arts in our quest for the continuity of consciousness. We'll discuss the relationship between the occult and Conscious Sleep. We'll talk about ways you might teach children how to Lucid and Pellucid Dream to stop night-terrors and enhance creative inspiration. Finally, we'll dive into the Three-Body Fitness Program and bring it all together.
SCT champions a full-spectrum approach to Conscious Sleep. Each dedicated and sincere practitioner represents a unique contribution to this timeless and perennial flower.
What new discoveries and contributions will you make?
