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I am looking for a scientific approach to lucid dreaming to augment my LD attempts. With that in mind, I am considering the iWinks Aurora headband that retails for $225 on preorder, (I'm an international customer). I'm on their site today, and I note that they plan to ship in July, (they mentioned in their update posts that they plan to increase the price to $299 domestic soon). My question to the group is, do you think their approach to triggering lucid dreaming is reasonable, as there is no physical product to test.

I don't mind taking a chance on purchasing as I've had trouble reaching the lucid dreaming state, I would like feedback as to whether iWink's Aurora's approach makes sense.

Hi, adding to my above question, while I have had problems LD'ing, does anyone have an opinion on becoming too dependent on dreaming masks for lucid dreaming in general, or, do they help in training by providing clues that you are dreaming? Does anyone have experience with other products, especially the "Nova Dreamer" and whether these tools help.

Hi Astralsuzy, thanks for the suggestions and feedback, I am in the process of reading The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep and I am enjoying it. In Buddhism and especially Tibetian Buddhism, recognizing and manipulating dreams is very important, this is because, when in the bardo state of death occurs there is no body as a reference point, so recognizing and manipulating the dream state helps in training for recognizing the bardo state of death, in Tibetian Buddhism there is the notion that shortly after death, you have the clearest opportunity for enlightenment, as your true, natural state of simplicity arises, before being covered over again due to karmic tendancies, and then the fearsome halucianations appear and the thirst for existence takes over. Indeed, the Buddhist notion of realms is infinate in number and vast in expanse, with this duelistic, "wake" reality also as seen as illusion, just as unreal as the dream state, so which one is more real than the other.

This snippet from wikipedia summerizes the bardo's it well...

The Tibetan word bardo means literally "intermediate state" - also translated as "transitional state" or "in-between state" or "liminal state". In Sanskrit the concept has the name antarabhāva. It is a concept which arose soon after the Buddha's passing, with a number of earlier Buddhist groups accepting the existence of such an intermediate state, while other schools rejected it.

Used loosely, the term "bardo" refers to the state of existence intermediate between two lives on earth. According to Tibetan tradition, after death and before one's next birth, when one's consciousness is not connected with a physical body, one experiences a variety of phenomena. These usually follow a particular sequence of degeneration from, just after death, the clearest experiences of reality of which one is spiritually capable, and then proceeding to terrifying hallucinations that arise from the impulses of one's previous unskillful actions. For the prepared and appropriately trained individuals the bardo offers a state of great opportunity for liberation, since transcendental insight may arise with the direct experience of reality, while for others it can become a place of danger as the karmically created hallucinations can impel one into a less than desirable rebirth.

Volgerle, thanks for your suggestions, I have recordered both Isochronic beats and binaural beats found on youtube and experimenting with techniques suggested in the books, and thanks for the link I will definately try it out.

Cheers

If these questions have already been covered sorry, I am a new member to the site, looking to get into lucid dreaming and looking for a place to start, I have bought a couple of books, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep and Seth Dreams and Projections of Consciousness. I am also looking to lucid dream using either Isochronic beats or  binaural beats, or any other technique that would encourage the state. Any offerings and opinions on resources and techniques, books audio anything else that can help?

BTW, on isochronic beats or binaural beats to lucid dream, are they equivalent, or is there a preference?

Now, where is my flashlight...