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I have some past experience with lucid dreaming. It’s not all fun and games. For me it was not a positive experience, it was very disturbing.

Look into Carlos Castaneda, in particular his personal life and that of his close associates, to see what can happen.

It’s opening a door that should remain closed, imho. I can see how it would send an already disturbed individual over the edge. The bounds of waking and sleeping, fantasy and reality can and do get obscured.

Read Loughner’s rambling screeds again knowing this, and the one thing that shines through is that he thinks he’s as able to manipulate and control waking reality as he is in the fleeting unreality of his dreams.

Some dream beings persist, though. You’re not in control of them. This is a time honored and known experience of practically all who attempt to practice lucid or conscious dreaming, to the point of being regarded as “spirit guides.”

Castaneda advised embracing them. Very bad idea, imho. Particularly if you’re Christian. I am, now.

So very glad you got away from this stuff RC....it seems to take people deeper and deeper into dangerous areas they have no control over....fear happens frequently but those who instruct or teach this often preach to move thru the fear. Nasty business and dangerous to play even on the edges of.

I know an individual who played too close to the edge and fell off. Has great difficulty focusing on reality so much so many job loses in just a years time. And yet still the individual thinks he’s in control!

IMO it’s not the conscious dreaming that is the problem, it is that the subconscious that creates the dreams is messed up by drug use and physical brain malfunctions. There is little we can do to control our subconscious over the short run (in the long run it is easy: live a virtuous life). What we cannot do is let our subconscious control us as this guy is apparently advising us to do.

I have some past experience with lucid dreaming. It’s not all fun and games. For me it was not a positive experience, it was very disturbing.
Look into Carlos Castaneda, in particular his personal life and that of his close associates, to see what can happen.
It’s opening a door that should remain closed, imho. I can see how it would send an already disturbed individual over the edge. The bounds of waking and sleeping, fantasy and reality can and do get obscured.
Read Loughner’s rambling screeds again knowing this, and the one thing that shines through is that he thinks he’s as able to manipulate and control waking reality as he is in the fleeting unreality of his dreams.
Some dream beings persist, though. You’re not in control of them. This is a time honored and known experience of practically all who attempt to practice lucid or conscious dreaming, to the point of being regarded as “spirit guides.”
Castaneda advised embracing them. Very bad idea, imho. Particularly if you’re Christian. I am, now.

Thank you! That's exactly what I'm talking about.

I'm particularly interested in what you said here:

Read Loughner’s rambling screeds again knowing this, and the one thing that shines through is that he thinks he’s as able to manipulate and control waking reality as he is in the fleeting unreality of his dreams

I didn't discern that. What's stands out to you? Is it the wierd repetition?

Schizophrenia is a disorder of the brain. A person can be schizophrenic and still be a moral person.

This is a time honored and known experience of practically all who attempt to practice lucid or conscious dreaming, to the point of being regarded as “spirit guides.”

I agree. This guy apparently opened a spiritual door where he encountered something evil, then made a choice to follow it.

To follow these practices are choices. . . his choices.

You can not blame a brain disorder for choosing to follow, and do just plain evil.

Look into Carlos Castaneda, in particular his personal life and that of his close associates, to see what can happen.

Just read his Wikipedia entry. Uh... Wooooow.

In his book The Art of Dreaming, Castaneda describes an encounter during a lucid dreaming session with a supposed conscious entity that was trapped by other inorganic beings. The trapped entity was named the Blue Scout because its "energy" appeared blueish and it was an energetic scout (meaning it was outside of its original realm). The Blue Scout was apparently bait used by the inorganic beings to trap Castaneda as well. But instead they (Castaneda and the Blue Scout) escaped by supposedly merging their energies.
The alleged result of merging their energies was that the Blue Scout followed Castaneda to our world. Furthermore, Castaneda claimed that he gave the Blue Scout a human physical body by helping Carol Tiggs give normal birth to her.
A real girl was brought forward at various public sessions held by Castaneda and Tiggs and was introduced as the Blue Scout, and Tiggs was referenced as her mother. This is strange because that girl was someone named Patricia Partin who had real, known biological parents other than Castaneda and Tiggs.
The remains of Partin, sometimes referred to by Castaneda as Blue Scout, Nury Alexander and/or Claude, were found in 2003 near where her abandoned car had been discovered a few weeks after Castaneda's death in 1998, on the edge of Death Valley. Her remains were in a condition requiring DNA identification, which was made in 2006.[2]