The experience of conscious sleep has been told a difficult task, and certainly one has to agree with that.
I went in it almost spontaneously and without great efforts, and being myself an observer I realized that were not for certain given conditions it would have been almost impossible to achieve.
In fact I realized that whenever that conditions changed, the capacity to experience
conscious sleep changed automatically.
To start with, before experiencing conscious sleep I had resided some three years in a natural environment. A convinced macrobiotic, my diet was basically vegetarian and used water from a local spring, I was active and often took sun bathes, exposing the body to the action of the elements, earth included under the form of clay.
This promoted a process of constant regeneration which I felt as an almost inexhaustible physical energy, a conspicuous peace of mind and emotions, and even my sleep changed, I could sleep four or five hours and feel completely restored, waking up with an extremely clear mind and a calm strength of the body.
Due to a fortuitous accident to an eye I applied Aloe Vera and I would quite often end by rubbing my body with the remaining pulp of the plant and even eating it.
I discovered that eating the pulp of the plant increased my clearness during sleep,
it had an evident influence in promoting lucid dreams, as I had become somehow more conscious during sleep, at wake could easily recall in full details any dream I had.
Farther researches in Ayurveda and elsewhere corroborated my assumption that the plant could have a beneficial influence on the brain and in all its conscious or subconscious activities, and I wonder if it could be beneficial in such cases as Alzheimer.
Obviously one doesn´t need to repeat exactly the described conditions, but whenever I tasted meat, had alcohol or increased the use of industrial food, it proportionally increased a certain dumbness of mind before sleeping and at wake, coming to the conclusion that the use of such substances may be a serious obstacle in the way of experiencing conscious sleep or the sensibility to the subconscious activity during sleep. In fact I could remember not only the dreams but that there had been spaces among them or a complete absence of any subconscious activity, a condition in which I was purposelessly conscious.
I was quite intrigued by those episodes in which tough sleeping, I suddenly become conscious during sleep, so I decided to investigate though I had not any method for it.
I concluded I should be more careful to the process of sleep itself and how it happens, I used to observe the process of the mind while I was falling asleep.
I observed that between the vigil and the sleep there was a third condition, a kind of
no-man´s land among them, it lasted only few brief moments before falling totally unconscious.
Subsequently I tried to be more aware of that third condition, trying to remain conscious of the process and somehow colonizing it, increasing the time I was conscious in that third position.
Invariably I would shift in dumb consciousness, but in a memorable occasion I clearly noticed that my whole consciousness had shifted through the process without any loss,
my physical body felt asleep, but instead of falling into dumbness I found myself perfectly conscious.
At first I had not a clear control over it, some night I would just fall unconscious and/or with sudden and short episodes of consciousness.
Knowing the positive influence on the brain of the affirmations, before sleeping I mentally repeated myself that I wanted to be conscious of the whole process, and I noticed that the combined affirmations and my conscience directed on and through the third condition, effectively produced a result because some time later I had no need anymore of such practices, shifting instead effortlessly through the whole process and while the physical body would fall asleep, I would found myself perfectly awake, not without surprise at first, but later I got used and it become just another ordinary activity.
This condition did not at all influenced the routinary restoring process of sleep of the physical body, nor had influence either on the subconscious activity in form of dreams, I was standing in between as a third power, a third condition: a mental being perfectly conscious in its mental body.
I consider that especially gifted individuals or having a peculiar strength of mind may easier succeed in experiencing conscious sleep, but for the average people is probably needed a purifying diet, reasonable activity and exposure to the elements.
