Subliminals: Are They REALLY Effective for Lucid Dreaming and OBE?
By Daniel A. Kelley
In the year 1982, the Journal of Abnormal Psychology featured an article regarding a research project on the effects of Subliminals on the test grades of a group of Israeli Math students. The tenth grade students were shown visual subliminal messages in Hebrew saying, "Mommy and I are one", "My teacher and I are one" and "People are walking in the street".
The Students received the messages four times per week for six weeks.
After the six weeks had elapsed, the group which had received the Subliminals scored higher than the other groups of students. The scientists speculated that the Subliminal phrases would instill a subconscious sense of trust and confidence in the students, and this confidence would bolster their intellectual capacity.
Anyone who's familiar with my own system, "Subliminal Cognition Training (SCT)", knows how I feel about binaural technology. When it comes to training Lucid Dreaming, Meditation, Astral Projection, and so forth, let's just say that I'm a little old fashioned. That said, there's only one way to pull me out of my "classic" stance on these topics:
The technique has to WORK!
That's fair, isn't it? 😎
Well, I must say, the science seems to point in favor of Subliminals as a viable method for inducing Lucidity. I'm not easily convinced, and upon learning of the scientific studies surrounding Subliminals, I admit that I was skeptical. For starters, there's too much $$ to be made on the "placebo effect" in all it's forms. Don't believe me? Go ahead and punch this link into your search engine:
https://listverse.com/2013/02/16/10-crazy-facts-about-the-placebo-effect/
But then I learned something fascinating about Subliminals. In that study on the Israeli Math students, the scientists discovered that the Subliminals only worked if the students were not aware that they were receiving them! Had they been made conscious of the fact that they were being shown subliminal messages to influence their academic performance, then I'd dismiss the entire thing as nonsense.
But that's not the case.
This actually solved a problem with I'd been grappling for years. It involves the act of hypnosis. Many years ago, I was taken to a hypnotist by my mother. As many of you know, my childhood was a terrifying intitiation into spontaneous OBE, Lucid Dreaming, paranormal phenomena, and night-terrors. Alongside that, I suffered from extreme anxiety and depression. My mother had tried everything she could to uproot the cause, but to no avail. I was sent to psychologists, hospitals, and even pastors, but neither of them knew what to do.
Our last stop was at a Hypnotist's office. I was about fifteen years old at the time. In retrospect, I now know that what the hypnotist was trying to do was get me into an intermediate state of Conscious Sleep, what I refer to in my system as "LD-2". Her goal was to access my subconscious mind so we both could find a way to gain some control over that was happening to me. At the time, I wasn't very impressed, as I'd always associated Hypnotists with an almost magical ability to tap into a subject's mind. Today, I'm quite shocked by how "on the right track" that doctor was!
At any rate, when the session was completed (unsuccessfully), the doctor and I got into a rather colorful conversation about the nature of so-called "psionic" devices, such as Ouija Boards, Pendulums, Dowsing Rods, and so on. At one point, to demonstrate the power of our subconscious minds to influence, not only our own behavior, but even the behavior of otherwise inanimate objects, she took out a piece of paper and a pendulum. On the paper she had me draw the four corners of a compass and then told me to hold the pendulum in my dominant hand and suspend it over the central point of the diagram. She then told me to move my eyes rapidly from left to right, at which point the pendulum began to sway from left to right! She then told me to bring my eyes to a stop, at which point the pendulum became totally still.
This simple demonstration opened many doors for me. I've conducted experiments, for example, with Tarot cards. In these experiments, I'd place three of some of the more terrifying cards from the deck in a triangle pattern on a table:
•Death
•The Devil
•The Hanged Man
I'd then have a test subject hold a pendulum in the center of these three cards. Next, I'd ask her to close her eyes and tell me toward which card she feels the pendulum pulling. Strangely, even if the test subject felt the most aversion to the Death card, she felt the pendulum pulling toward The Devil! In other words, he conscious fear of death may actually shave subconscious roots in fears of the Devil and eternal damnation in hellfire.
Translated to the topic of Lucid Dreaming and OBE, can Subliminals help to speed along one's mastery? I conducted a poll on a bunch of online forums and asked if anyone had used Subliminal messages separate from binaural beats technology. I wanted to be sure that success or failure was the direct result of the Subliminal messages and not the fault of the binaural beats.
Here's what a few of them had to say about it:
"I've been using visual Subliminals for over two years now for OBE and I'm positively shocked at how effective they are! Sure, this could be placebo effect, but if so then I want some more sugar pills!:
-Becky (Colorado)
"Subliminals do not work. I spent alot of time with them so believe me when I say that they're a total waste of time and money. There is just no shortcut to Lucid Dreaming."
-Brian (Canada)
"I've used Subliminal messages alongside musical scores. I've had mixed results. I can't tell if the Subliminal music just gave me the added confidence I need to Lucid Dream or if they actually worked, as they didn't work for long before I was back to square one and doing the actual work myself."
-Roxanne (Minnesota)
"I've used Subliminals now for about one year. Before I used them, I tried everything to Lucid Dream. Reality Checks, Mugwort, Meditation, Phasing, and I only had maybe one or two Lucid Dreams every month. Since I started using Subliminals, I Lucid Dream twice a week!"
Ron (Connecticut)
So the verdict is out. Most of the people I interviewed swear by Subliminals as a means for inducing Lucidity and OBE. Personally, I can't speak to that as I learned the hard way, through many years of struggle, confusion, frustration, misdiagnoses, and alienation. I Subliminals help other Veilers avoid all of that misery, so be it. I still maintain that over reliance on dream supplements, binaural, and Subliminals is a fool's errand. While they may be great as supplements to a complete Dream Yoga, to use them as the sole means of achieving the proper Etheric and Astral anatomy for Lucid Dreaming and other forms of OBE is to serious handicap the Integral growth of yourself as an accomplished Oneironaut.
What do YOU think about it?