Suggest that instead as we falling to asleep, we will come into another kind of wakefulness. Try to imagine that you are awake when you sleep. On other occasions when we go to bed, lie down and settle yourself, but as you fall asleep imagine that you are awakening the next morning. I will not tell you what to look for. The doing of this exercise is important– not the results in usual terms.

There are different kinds of knowledge; so will this exercise bring us in contact with knowledge in another way. Done over a period of time, they will open up alternate modes of perception, so that we can view our experience from more than one standpoint. This means that our experience will itself change in quality. Sometimes when you are awake, and it is convenient, imagine that your present experience of the moment is a dream, and is highly symbolic. Then try to interpret it as such.

Who are the people? What do they represent? If that experience were a dream, what would it mean? And into what kind of waking life would you rise in the morning?

The qualities of consciousness cannot be elucidated. This exercise will bring us in contact with other kinds of knowing, and acquaint us with different feelings of consciousness that are not familiar. Our consciousness itself will then have a different feel as the exercise is done. Certain questions that we may have asked may be answered in such a state, but not in ways that we can anticipate, nor can we necessarily translate the answers into known terms. The different modes of consciousness with which I hope to acquaint you are not alien, however. They are quite native, again, in dream states, and are always present as alternatives beneath usual awareness.