The Master Of Lucid Dreams [Paperback]

In her new book, the outer story of how she meets a remarkable healer in Uzbekistan is somewhat surreal but as captivating as a good novel. She moves forward, in this new account of her continuing development as a healer, with her usual persistent curiousity and willingness to take chances at junctures where others would quickly turn back or see little opportunity. This persistence leads her finally to meet "Michael", a gifted healer and highly evolved spirit, in the city of Samarkand.

And then it becomes the inner story of her meetings and walks about Samarkand with Michael which actually make this book so valuable and provocative. She has come to Samarkand to learn more about a method of healing the "spirits of trauma", which a visiting lecturer in Russia had told her is still practiced by healers there since ancient times. Yet the first thing that Michael has her start to see is her own need for healing from things that she only has faint contact with, within her own life.

From this starting point, Michael opens a huge, interconnected and timeless, dream-level view of the causes of suffering among all humans for generations and even beyond death. And then he introduces her to the way in which the healers of Uzbekistan heal this suffering by ridding one of the spirits of trauma that otherwise occupy the "space" where the trauma has occurred. But this healing really only begins to happen, she learns, when one has accepted as real, without evasion and without giving inner "space" to, the trauma which is already a part of oneself.

My only disappointment with this book was the heavy emphasis that it places on women's experiences - not because they aren't important. Healing the feminine side of the human experience may well be our greatest challenge. And this must, of course, include men. But even with this emphasis on women's experiences, Master of Lucid Dreams is a MAGNIFICENT and compelling, timely book for all spontaneous adventurers who are truly brave of heart! A must read.

There is also disappointingly little information on healing/shamanic traditions in Uzbekistan, something one might expect Kharitidi, a self-described expert in shamanism and a Russian speaker, to be able to deliver. ... not to mention zero information on lucid dreaming. K. seems content to present us with a watery and sentimental pseudo-autobiographic (fictional?) account of her "meetings with remarkable men" in Central Asia. Many Altaic traditions, including especially the Tibetans just around the corner, have developed amazingly sophisticated methods for maintaining awareness during sleep. Kharitidi does not tap into this wealth of accumulated knowledge and in fact appears to be oblivious of it.

This is not a book for people interested in shamanism. lucid dreaming or authentic experience of alternate realities. Its only saving grace is that it puts (however fictional) Central Asian esoteric traditions on the map - where they richly deserve to be.