Suggestions will allow you to awaken yourself as soon as a dream is completed. The dream will then be fresh. If your recorder is suitably situated with the microphone easily at hand, then you can speak your dream with less effort than is required to write it down. Of course records must be kept. The simplest part of this experiment will involve the use of suggestion to awaken yourself at the completion of each dream.

The number of remembered dreams should be much higher than your present system allows. I also suggest that the first recalled dream for any given evening be compared with the first recalled dream from other evenings, and that the second recalled dream from any one evening be compared with the second dream from other evenings, and so forth.

This should prove highly interesting, and if such experiments are carried on consciously over a period of years, then the results could lead to excellent evidence for the various layers of the subconscious and inner self, of which I have spoken for so long.

Particular notice should also be taken of characters and settings and the approximate period of history in which the dream action occurs. If the dream seems to happen in no specific location and in no particular time, then these facts should also be noted.

Unknown characters within the dream action, persons unknown to you in daily life, should be given careful attention also, and the roles which they play within the dream drama. The primary colors should be checked against physical reality so that any clairvoyant elements are clearly checked and recorded.

There are many ways in which you can approach these newer dream experiments. You may, if you prefer, begin by suggesting that you will awaken after each of the first five dreams. If possible, we want to get the dreams in order here.

Now, there is something else to be considered. The very self-suggestions that will enable you to recall dreams will also change their nature to some extent. This is all right, and the effect will be minimized when the newness has worn off. Again, we want the dreams in the sequence in which they occur. If you do not want to wake up after each dream on the evening, then the suggestion should always include ‘I will recall the first three dreams, of the first five dreams, or whatever.’

You may try two different wordings for a start, and now I am speaking of precise wording. The first: ‘I will wake up after each of my first five dreams and record each one immediately.” The second alternative wording would be the same as the one I have just given, but the ‘Wake up’ would be omitted. That is, it is possible for you to record the dreams, speaking into the microphone without awakening.

This is not only possible but by far the most convenient. You should try both methods and discover which one works the best for you. If at all possible, the recorder should be in the bedroom ( not in another part of the house.) It is the immediate dream recall we are after. We want you to record the dream at the instant of awakening or at the instant that the dream is about to dissolve.

The time involved in going from one room to another could result in the loss of dream content and vividness. The very motor responses demanded on the part of the body and the extra arousal tendency would force you to lose a good deal of valid material. I would prefer that you work less, if necessary, using the recorder in the bedroom, than work more intensely leaving the recorder in another room.

It is the dream we are after, the dream experience in all the vividness that we can capture, and if you are going to get a watered-down version in any case, then you may as well continue with your present method (of writing them down in the morning) and save your sleep.

With the method I have just given you, you will be able to capture as much of the whole dream experience as any investigators manage to do (in dream-labs) when the awakening is done by a mechanical device or by another person. You will also be gaining excellent discipline and training over your own states of consciousness and this, in itself, will be an important yardstick of progress for you.

Now, mankind/womankind uses but a portion of its capabilities. When you are well along in these experiments, you will find that you handle them very well, with no training of energies. Your sleeping hours are already productive. We shall also use them to give you training in the utilization of various stages of consciousness. Added to this, the training will give you valuable insight into the nature of dreams in general, the stages of the subconscious and the inner life of the personality when it is dissociated from its physical environment to some considerable extent.

Much later, there will be other suggestions for you in which you will direct your sleeping self to perform certain activities, visit certain locations and bring back information. This is obviously still very much in the future, but it is well within the abilities of the inner self.

There are serveral kinds of time that will appear within your dream, and you must sort these out carefully. While sleeping in your present time, you may have a dream that concerns your past, with events that you know to have occurred years ago. Nevertheless, you may experience these events (within the dream) as happening within the present.

The present within which you seem to experience the dream is not, however, the present in physical time – the present in which your body lies upon the bed. There is a fine distinction here and one that you will learn through experience as you go on, so I will not discuss it now.

It should be obvious also that within your dreams a special location that belongs to the present physical time can be experienced in the past or in the future within the dream framework, and again, there is much more here also than meets the eye; so watch out so that you can catch these developments.

I am particularly interested in these experiments, and as a preliminary for them, we will have you work with suggestion alone before you attempt to begin with your recordings. We shall have you working well in your sleep, for the dream will not be captured in a laboratory – by scientists who will not look into their own dreams.

The nature of reality can be approached only by an investigation of it as it is directly experienced in all levels of awareness: reality as it appears under dream conditions, under other conditions of dissociation and as it appears in the waking state. Even studies dealing with the conscious state are usually superficial, dealing only with ‘upper’ levels of egotistical awareness.

All layers of the personality are ‘conscious.’ They simply operate like compartments, so that often one portion of the self is not aware of other portions. As a rule, when you are awake you do not know your sleeping self; you know your neighbor far better, so your sleeping self seems mysterious indeed. When you are awake, you cannot find the dream locations that have been so familiar to you only the night before.

In your sleep, you may have greeted friends who are strangers to your waking self. But consider the other side of the coin. For when you are asleep, you usually cannot find the street upon which you live your waking hours, and when you are asleep, you do not know your waking self. The sleeping self is your identity.

There are connections between these two conditions, and there are definite realities that exist in both states, and these are what you are looking for. Only by finding these can you discover the nature of human personality and the nature of reality within which it operates.

We have also spoken of the dream as a drama, and you must discover the various levels within which these dramas take place. You will also find that the various levels of the ‘subconscious’ will yield their own characteristics, and as your records grow, this will become apparent. It is necessary, then, that dreams are recorded in consecutive order whenever possible.