15.13 A symbol used as a bridge
During your night practice in the evening, before sleep make a
strong resolution that the first thing you will do when recovering
consciousness in the morning will be to try and remember what
happened in the night. A good method is to choose a symbol (such
as a star, a pentagram, or anything you judge appropriate) and to
try at any cost to be aware of the symbol at the very moment of
falling asleep and immediately when waking up. As soon as you
recover your first thread of waking consciousness in the morning,
recall the symbol. This creates a bridge between the two instants.
15.14 Keep recalling your dreams across the buffer zone
The limit between being asleep and being awake is more like a space
than a line.
In the morning you first recover your consciousness in A, let us
say. You may not be aware of it, but you will have to cross the
whole space between A and B before you are fully awake. It
happens automatically and unconsciously. Most people never notice
it.
Now suppose you remember a dream or an astral journey in A. By
the time you reach B, you are very likely to have forgotten it
again. So that, to bring memories back with you into the waking
state, you have to recall them a few times as you are crossing the
buffer-zone. You will have to remember first in A, then in A1,
then in A2, then in A3, then in B.
Remember your dreams immediately, as soon as you recover a bit
of waking consciousness. Otherwise you will end up in A3 or even
in B without noticing it, and it will already be too late, everything
having been forgotten.
For the same reasons, remain extremely motionless in bed when
you recover consciousness. By changing position you speed up the
transition from A to B. As soon as your thread of conscious
awareness is recovered in the morning, do not move and try to