married.   "Oh,   and   Lord,"  I  added,  "would  you  mind
throwing  a  wedding dress somewhere into the dream so
that  I'll  know  what  the  dream is about,  no  matter how
strange the imagery seems?"  Well,  I  had  great success
with  this  first  incubation  and  with the next two, which
were  aimed  at  further  clarifying  the  same  issue.  The
resulting  dreams  were extraordinarily helpful regarding
the marriage issue,  and  they initiated me into a study of
dream incubation that has occupied me ever since.
      As   I   continued    my   personal   experiments   with
incubation,  I  learned  that it was unnecessary to request
landmark imagery in the dream (such as a wedding dress)
because   the   dreams   were   quite  easily  recognizable
responses    to    my   incubation    petitions.   As   dream
incubation became easy for me,  I began to try to teach it
to fellow dreamers.  But alas!  I found that simply telling
someone  to  ask  for  a  dream  in  a  prayer,  or, as many
psychics  and researchers instruct,  simply  to suggest to
yourself  that  you  will  have  the  desired  dream,  didn't
often work. I then concentrated on defining a simple, but
explicit, technique for incubation.
      Teaching classes  in dream study,  I  worked  with my
students to develop as specific  and simple an incubation
procedure  as  possible  that would be: (1) brief, (2) easy
to follow at home,  alone,  even  by people new to dream
study,  (3)   consistently   productive   of   "successfully"
incubated  dreams  which  deal with the incubation issue,
and   (4)   easy,   enjoyable   and   rewarding   enough   to
encourage  the  dreamer  to  use incubation often, as one
might  use any prized skill.  In other words,  my goal was
to provide dreamers  with  a technique that would render
them more self-sufficient  in  their study of their fullest
selfhood.  One  of  the  most  fascinating ways to tap the
reserves of the "higher" self  is the incubation of dreams.
      From  my  study  of  Cayce,  Seth  and  others,  I  was
convinced  that  suggestion   is   the  key   factor   in   the
incubation  of  dreams.  But  exactly  how  to  set  up  the
suggestion  so  that  it  could  easily  be  taught  required
some   experimentation.   With   this   goal   in   mind,   I
conducted  a  research project  for  my master's thesis in

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