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Frank Kepple's posts on the Astral Pulse forums are a valuable resource for those serious about exploring their inner worlds and gaining control over their dreams.

The posts span several years and, when read in sequence, provide a transcript of Frank's progress towards a mastery of lucid dreaming.

Although not everyone may agree with his particular worldview and theories on the afterlife, his posts contain many insights into the process of conscious transition into the world of Lucid Dreams.

Xanth on these forums made a very nice PDF a while ago with all of Frank's posts in it. Over the years, however, for my own reference I've been making a collection of his most useful posts focusing on the purely practical side of things, editing out all the extra bits I felt didn't contribute and labeling them by topic. I think Frank has a lot of good ideas but not all of them are worth reading if you just want to GET THERE... Recently I decided to organize them into categories and have created a useful document. You guys can read it if you like, I've shared it on Google Docs:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aytbhjRRgmbIFRe3pb8yw9NWh88Ra_mjJZWO3fafbw0/edit?usp=sharing

Best of luck

I've been trying to do this for about two years now through meditation and various wake-induced methods, and although I've had a lot of tantalizing near-misses, it's been without success.

Recently I decided to read the SOBT e-book from obe4u.com and follow its instructions to the letter, and two short weeks later I had a perfect phase experience. Here's what happened:



I woke up at 6AM, went to the bathroom, and then lay back down immediately to try to sleep. I usually have difficulty falling asleep, so this time, for the first time, I put on earplugs and a facemask. After about an hour, I was still quite awake and running through ideas for my class in my head.

After an hour I wasn't falling asleep but I was very physically relaxed, so I tried forced falling asleep (technique from SOBT). After about 10-15 seconds, I felt a strange dislocation and numbness settle over my body, which felt unusual. I immediately tried listening in, and heard a very loud ringing sound, like fire alarms going off. I listened to it and it got louder and then seemed to peak. It was very loud, but nothing else was happening so I switched to observing images for a few seconds. Nothing, and the ringing got quieter, so I went back to listening in. It got louder again, and again it seemed to peak.

Then I realized that it was so loud that I was probably already in the phase but didn't realize it. I tried rolling over with a sudden jerk and BAM! I was out of bed, standing on the floor! I can't describe how unexpected this was: I had no idea what rolling out would feel like, and it turned out to be kind of like climbing out of a pool, about that much resistance.

I was very excited, but I remembered the SOBT advice to immediately deepen. Everything was grey and I felt nothing, heard nothing, saw only grey silhouettes around me. I started rubbing my hands together firmly in front of my face and they slowly came into view, along with everything else in my room. I started peering at my hands and fingers, and my vision became crystal clear. My room came into perfect lifelike focus. I walked around my room peering and palpating everything I could find. Since it was my first time in the phase, I examined all the random objects lying around on my shelves and table and they all appeared perfectly real, even the writing on them (I didn't stop to try to read the individual words because I didn't want a foul). I continuously reminded myself that I was dreaming, so as not to lose consciousness and fall asleep.

After spending about a minute looking at everything and being amazed by the simulacrum of reality, I decided to try to do something with the experience. I didn't have any plans beforehand because I was not really expecting success, but I decided on the spur of the moment to try flying. I looked up at my ceiling, then down at my feet, took a deep breath and tried to levitate while looking at my feet. They slowly rose a few inches off the floor, and as I exhaled they went back down. Perfectly controlled, as I expected. I tried again, with another deep breath and this time a jump, and I launched myself through my ceiling like superman, fists extended. I didn't want to pass through my ceiling insubstantially, I wanted to blast out, and I did, through about 10 floors of brick and plaster which exploded in front of me like a multistory pratfall in reverse.

Then I was out, above my house. I was not in my neighborhood, but in some kind of huge cave that housed an entire city. I didn't recognize anything and didn't have any plans of where to go, so I just flew around a little bit and eventually zoomed in on a window where some "friend" of mine (I don't know who it was, they were just labeled "friend" in my dream consciousness") was watching a movie on television. At this point, since I didn't have anything to do, and I was just hovering outside the window with a pause in my actions, I fouled and woke up in bed.

Just a note: Don't post your method here if it doesn't actually work. "This method looks promising" or "lately I've been trying this" is not the point of the thread. Please be detailed and post how long it takes you.


My method is to lie on my back and count my breaths up to 20 and back down to 1. With each exhale I relax my body a little more. By the time I'm back at 1 my breathing is very subtle. My body's not asleep yet, though, so to get that "heavy body" or "numb body" feeling I mentally go through relaxing each part of my face and head one by one, finishing with my eyeballs. The way I relax each part is to be mindfully aware of any tension I feel, without trying to actively release the tension. After about a minute the tension completely dissolves on its own. This whole process takes me about 15-25 minutes.


If anyone else has effective methods I'd like to hear about them and give them a try.

Since I discovered this it's become my favorite way to listen to music. You need to be as comfortable as possible, though, because you will lose sensation of your body and fall over or slump badly and end up with a stiff neck.


Frank Kepple often talked about changing your focal point of awareness. Usually this point is in your eyes, when you're looking at the world. When I meditate on my breath I move this focal point of awareness to my nose.

Recently I found out that if you're listening to music you can move your focal point of awareness to the music. I do not mean to your ears, but to the actual music being interpreted by your brain once it travels to your auditory cortex. At first it took me about 30-40 minutes to reach this state, but since I've been practicing (this is extremely fun to do!) I can get there in about 15 minutes now. It's AWESOME, here's how to do it:

1) Get in a relaxed position. Sitting down with neck support is fine, lying down is even better.
2) Close your eyes and listen to music through headphones.
3) Relax your face and eyes as much as possible. The eyes will be the hardest thing to relax completely, so don't spend more than a few minutes on this as it will happen by itself in the following steps.
4) Calmly focus on all the instruments and voices you hear in the music. At first it seems like you're just hearing sounds in your ears, but after a while you may notice that the sounds are actually taking shape in your consciousness, somewhere inside your head. For me it feels like they are at a point near the back of my head, where men get bald spots.
5) Focus on the music in this location and try to perceive it with your mind instead of with your ears or eyes. Yes, you are actually using your eyes to listen to music: if you pay attention you will notice this subtle action.
6) Eventually everything falls away except the music. You perceive pure music, and you hear all the sounds, instruments, subtle touches you never noticed, all at once. Your body disappears completely, like you're in sleep paralysis (but of course you can move if you want). This stage is EXTREMELY obvious, you will know you're there right away. You will probably lose it after a few seconds, but be patient and it will come back.

What I'm describing is basically mindfulness meditation, where the focus of mindfulness is the music. This is great if you have good-quality headphones, since you end up hearing every little detail in the music. It's like being on stage with the musicians. Some types of music work better than others: for example, music with a high degree of stereo separation is harder than music where the instruments are more spatially centered (narrower sound stage).

Anyway, it's entertaining and I predict success for anyone with any meditation experience, and would love to hear about the experiences of others who try it! It's a great way to practice moving your focal point of awareness away from your eyes, as well, which was my original intent. It just turns out it's a great way to listen to music.

I read about this technique recently and tried it out: the results were pretty startling. The effect is so intense that I have trouble staying physically relaxed, so some practice is needed to get to the point where you're "bored" with it and can just go with the flow. Anyway, the technique:

1) Get into a relaxed state. The more relaxed, the better. I did this after getting about 70% of the way to Focus 10.
2) Try to clench your brain, as if it were a muscle, and then relax it.

This moves your focal point of awareness to your head immediately, with some weird effects. Personally I feel a burst of vibrations, like I'm dipping into sleep paralysis for just a second or two. If you're not feeling anything, play around with straining different areas of your brain until you figure it out.

Important: It's easy to accidentally tense up your face, neck, or shoulders, instead of your imaginary brain. Avoid this.

[know very well]

I discovered this by accident one day while listening to an album of music. First a bit of background:

If you're familiar with Winamp, it's music software that contains a very nice visualizer called Milkdrop. Itunes has something similar. Anyway, I used milkdrop for this because it uses "presets," which are individual visualizations. As you play music, milkdrop loads a preset randomly, plays it for around 30 seconds, and then loads another random preset and blends the two together. You can switch to the next preset by hitting H on your keyboard and you can lock the current preset so it doesn't change by hitting "scroll lock" button on your keyboard.

The exercise:

1)Play an album you know very well and enjoy, preferably high-fidelity and with vocals, and turn on the milkdrop visualiser so it is in Full-Screen mode. I used headphones, but speakers will do if you don't have any.
2)Hit H until you hit a visualization that is fairly uniform but still colorful and pretty. When you find one you like hit Scroll Lock to prevent it from changing over time. Avoid presets that have individual elements moving around the screen as they will make this exercise too difficult.
3) Sit in front of your monitor so the visualization is taking up most of your visual field. Relax your eyes so they naturally fall on a point in the center of the monitor.
4) Now, keeping your eyes open, imagine the band, on stage, playing the music you are hearing. See the instruments, the singers, try to get a stable image going.


You will find your attention is constantly being pulled back to the monitor. You will be able to see the band playing in your mind's eye for just a split second at a time before your attention is torn away by the pretty visuals in front of you. As you practice you will be able to hold the image of the band for long and longer. If you can do it for 3 seconds you are extremely advanced and I recommend you stop immediately and go phasing.

The point of this exercise is to develop the skill of being able to switch your attention from your physical eyes to your mental ones. After a while you should become familiar with the action of switching your attention: it will feel like flexing a muscle you use all the time. I guarantee you will feel some weird sensations after a while, but don't expect to phase, and don't do this for more than half an hour as your eyes will dry out from not blinking.


If anyone decides to try this please let me know about any sensations, successes, or failures you experience.