Dreaming to Become Awake

The idea that reality is a dream is not new. Eastern and Western traditions alike have long hinted at it, sometimes explicitly, and sometimes in riddles. But what if there’s more to this than metaphor? What if we are, in a very real and literal sense, dreaming our way toward wakefulness?

Many traditions have developed practices for engaging with reality as if it were a dream—Tibetan Dream Yoga, Hermetic visualization, astral projection, lucid dreaming. Each offers a glimpse beyond the veil. But today, we have something those mystics didn’t: the tools of modern neuroscience, and the precision of ontological mathematics. We now have a framework that can connect the ancient with the modern, the mystical with the rational. So the question becomes: can we take this age-old idea—that life is a dream—and build a precise, practical roadmap for becoming fully awake?

In a world made of mind, what else could matter be but a dream? This is the heart of what this book is about: The Dream of Matter—not just as a poetic image, but as the literal architecture of experience.

A Personal Thread

I’ve always felt a deep affinity with dreams. Like many people, I have memories from early childhood of floating out of my body, flying around the neighborhood, exploring from a distance the same familiar houses and streets I saw in waking life. I remember it vividly: I would lie in bed and imagine my body spinning like a top—until suddenly, pop, I was out.

These were the earliest clues that reality was more layered than I’d been taught. But I didn’t always know how to interpret them.

Later in life, I experienced another peculiar pattern. If I wasn’t actively engaged—especially in settings like executive meetings—I would spontaneously fall asleep. Not out of tiredness, but almost as if my consciousness were being shoved aside. It felt oppressive. Like something larger, deeper, was taking over. The reality around me would morph. I’d see people pass me things that didn’t exist. A pitcher of water. A folder that no one brought. These weren’t daydreams—they were mild hallucinations, as my brain slipped into the equivalent of REM sleep.

While I was never formally diagnosed with narcolepsy, and it could conceivably have been simply extreme lack of sleep, the possibility seems likely. It was clear that I was sliding, rapidly and uncontrollably, from waking consciousness into a REM-like state, where the lines between the private and collective dream blur. With episodes occurring many times every day, I was always naturally curious about the nature of dreams.

What Are We Dreaming, Really?

The idea that we are dreaming to become awake also has ancient roots. One of the most advanced systems built around this principle is Tibetan Dream Yoga, which teaches that dream awareness can lead to liberation from the cycle of samsara. It’s not just about lucid dreaming—it’s about training your awareness within the dream, and learning to treat waking life as part of the dream continuum.

But how, exactly, does Dream Yoga lead to liberation from samsara?

When I first began practicing this system, especially the idea of walking through the world as if it were a dream, things started to shift. I remember a cab ride where I felt my sense of self loosen, gently swaying inside and slightly outside of my physical body. Something was clicking. Or, perhaps, loosening.

I started thinking differently about the nature of reality. About how we each carry our private dreamscape, our own personal interference pattern, where thoughts move freely and the imagination has no physical limits. But we also contribute to—and inhabit—the collective dream: the cosmic interference pattern that shapes the physical universe we share.

Lucid dreaming may be our most intrinsic and precise tool for self-exploration. It’s not just a curiosity—it’s a built-in interface to the unconscious, a direct and interactive gateway to our personal psyche, which is itself a microcosm of the cosmos. Within a lucid dream, we have the ability to interactively walk through and explore our unconscious mind. How incredible is that?

And here’s where ontological mathematics provides something extraordinary: a way to rationally distinguish between different domains of dreaming.

Mapping the Dream Domains

Ontological mathematics explains that every mind—a dimensionless monad—generates its own private dream world. These are literal mental universes made of sinusoidal thoughts. In dreams, we interact with this private interference pattern. We are the sole architects and observers. That’s why anything can happen—we are the only mind projecting that world.

But there’s another kind of dreaming: collective dreaming.

When we project our mind into the shared ontological domain—what some call the “lower astral plane”—we are no longer the sole dreamer. We’re navigating a space where other minds are active participants. This is mental, not physical, but overlaps with the structure of the material universe. In lucid dreaming terms, this is the difference between inhabiting your own private castle versus visiting the shared city.

There is also what Robert Bruce calls the “real-time zone,” which overlaps with our physical, collective universe. This is still just as much a “dream” as our private dreams, but what makes it so solid---so objective---is the consensus between countless dreamers.

Above this, there are even higher frequency domains—what we might call the “higher astral planes.” According to ontological mathematics, these domains don’t manifest physically because they operate at frequencies that exceed the material limit set by the collective Fourier domain.

In other words, the physical universe is composed only of the frequency components that fall within a specific band—those frequencies that, when summed, produce a stable, shared material world. But beyond this band lie pure mental frequencies—regions of the frequency spectrum that cannot be rendered into physical forms.

And then there’s shared private dreaming: a group of monads forming a temporary mental construct together. This is what Inception captured poetically—where multiple dreamers enter the same dream, and the ability to change elements depends on the coherence between their waveforms. What one can influence depends on the phase alignment with the others.

In some of my own experiences, I found I could catch glimpses into the mind of another dreamer—not by guessing, but by literally perceiving symbols, fears, or memories that were clearly not mine. But I found this to also be confusing---I could just as easily mistake my own mental constructs for other minds.

Robert Monroe—founder of The Monroe Institute and pioneer of out-of-body exploration—encountered the same confusion. He initially believed all his astral journeys were “objective,” exploring actual realms. But over time, he realized many were internal—immersed in his own symbolic mental terrain. His journey, like mine, was a process of learning to discriminate between private dream and shared domain.

Monroe also strongly emphasized hemispheric synchronization—a practice also championed by the Monroe Institute using binaural beats. Ontological mathematics explains why this works: the right hemisphere is not just imaginative—it’s non-local. It is the natural interface to the collective mental domain. When it dominates or is harmonized with the left hemisphere, we become more capable of navigating layers of consciousness that transcend space and time.

Returning to Source: A Neuro-Ontological Perspective

Though I seemed to have intuitive access to these states as a child, “I”—this version of me, James—had to relearn it all consciously. That’s what led me to study EEG, meditation, and the neurological basis of altered states.

I found classic texts, such as Maxwell Cade’s The Awakened Mind, which emphasized the role of the alpha rhythm as a bridge between the conscious and unconscious, and theta as the brain’s language of dreams. I learned that cross-frequency coupling—the harmonious interaction between alpha and theta—could facilitate access to these altered states, by supporting communication between brain regions and frequency domains.

As I developed this energetic awareness, I noticed something else: my ability to make sense of my own dreams rapidly accelerated. The symbols became clearer. Their meaning felt instantly accessible, like my inner translator had been turned on. I began to infer that perhaps the mystics of the past were doing the same—developing energetic sensitivity and simply taking notes. What we now call dream interpretation may well be the legacy of those mapmakers, charting the unconscious terrain for others to follow.

Ontological mathematics added an even deeper layer: the frequency domain doesn’t just correlate with altered states—it is the foundation of mind. All mentation happens outside of space and time, at y = 0 and y = ∞. In other words, the source of consciousness is frequency-based, not spatiotemporal.

So what happens when we tune our brain closer and closer to 0 Hz?

We pass through the theta band—4 to 8 Hz—which happens to coincide with deep meditative and dream states. Maybe that’s not a coincidence. Maybe theta isn’t just a brain rhythm. Maybe it’s a frequency marker on the path back to source.

In my own experiments, I developed a protocol almost entirely by intuition—long before I encountered formal guides. I began using theta-alpha harmonic stimulation as a kind of pointing out instruction—not as a crutch, but as a catalyst. The goal wasn’t dependence on technology, but to give my system a reference point—a firsthand experience of lucidity that it could later recognize and return to unaided. I targeted brain regions like the anterior cingulate cortex—which I suspected might correlate with the “third eye” or command center of inner attention—and paired it with heart-focused Solfeggio frequencies. What followed was unmistakable: deep vibrational states, and lucid dreams that became spontaneous and regular.

Only later did I find texts, like Robert Bruce’s Mastering Astral Projection, that described almost exactly what I’d stumbled upon. It confirmed what I’d suspected: the body knows. The soul remembers. This protocol wasn’t just a shortcut—it was a training ground. It showed me what was possible, and that these altered states were already within me, waiting to be remembered.

My hope is to someday refine and share these protocols—not just for lucid dreaming, but as a gateway to stable inner awareness, a tool for unlocking access to the deeper strata of the self. When used wisely, they can help build a lasting capacity for self-inquiry, subtle perception, and inner coherence.

But I also found something very unexpected. I had focused on theta-alpha coupling, but hadn’t even considered the left-right hemispheric synchrony that Bob Monroe and others advocate.

When I began investigating my own EEG more deeply, I found signs of a possible early-life brain injury—perhaps a stroke. The result? Significant right-hemisphere compensation. I hadn’t needed to train hemispheric synchronization—my brain had already defaulted to the hemisphere built for lucid dreaming. When I consider building protocols for others, I will have to keep this in mind!

The Lucid Threshold

At that point, I no longer believed that the physical world was the whole story—I knew it. I had seen beyond the veil. I had traveled through layers of mind that made it clear we are not our bodies or our waking selves.

But sharing this wasn’t easy.

My (ex-) partner, though supportive in many ways, asked me not to speak about it around his friends. These kind of subjects were fringe, and it would make him uncomfortable. I shut down. Where once I could lie down and leave my body with ease, suddenly I found myself blocked.

My confidence shattered. I had lost my access—or so I thought.

Writing about this experience, I’ve begun to reconnect. This act—this sharing—is itself part of the reawakening. And I believe, with enough courage and enough clarity, we can all rediscover this ability together.

Lucid dreaming isn’t just a trick—it’s a profound threshold. A developmental marker. When your awareness becomes stable and refined enough to navigate unconscious patterns consciously, lucidity emerges. It’s both a tool and a mirror. The more lucid we become in dreams, the more lucid we become in waking life.

And perhaps that’s the real goal—not just to explore the dream, but to bring it into greater harmony. To refine our inner interference pattern so that it resonates more clearly with what we truly are. Perhaps that is Dream Yoga helps us escape samsara.

The deeper we go into these altered states, the more we understand that lucidity is all about self-knowledge. It’s about alignment. And perhaps, in another essay, we can explore how out-of-body travel—shamanic perspective, as it were—can deepen this work even further. Not just to understand the self, but to begin navigating the collective mindspace with clarity. To help others become more lucid too.

Because what good is waking up if we do it alone?

We’re dreaming to become awake. And maybe, ultimately, to help others awaken too.