Lucid Dreaming

[truthseeker]

I know that this topic has been explored here before but with all the latest news on the Tucson shooter delving into lucid dreaming I wanted to see if anybody here has had any real experience with it. I'm immensely interested in the topic as I think that the idea of controlling your own dreams is awesome and can provide an escape from daily grind. To be a god within your own world is a powerful idea that I'm sure a lot of people would find an interest in.

I'm curious to know if anybody here has experienced lucid dreaming or know and can share any techniques that may help one attain this state. What does it feel like? Can you really be in control of your environment?

A number of times in the past I've experienced extremely vivid dreams where I thought I was aware of my dream-state, however I don't think that I was able to control the environment that I was in. I was kind of going with the flow.

Also, anybody see any danger in it, as in losing one's mind or perception of reality - as is probably the case with the Tucson shooter.

 

[JD Thompson]

I've spent some time on this subject. Fair warning: most, if not all, of the literature available is hogwash, or worse. There haven't been any serious studies that I'm aware of.
Here's sort of an outline of what I experienced:
-first, I started a dream journal. Just kept a tablet near my bed, and made sure to log immediately after waking. This was basically an add-on to the project, and is probably wholly optional.
-at the same time, I began to focus, whilst going to sleep, on what are called phosphenes. These are the ephemeral images one sees in near total darkness, with eyes closed.
-it's harder than you think to focus on the phosphenes. It's just human nature to interject fantasy as a replacement for the nothingness you see. No daydreaming about Michelle Pfeiffer here, you want to -----see---- and focus upon, what is there.
-after a period of a few days, I began seeing unbiden images. This is, to say the least, unnerving at first. After a few minutes of hard focusing on the nothingness behind my eyelids, I began seeing things that were not products of my conscious imagination: people unknown to me would literally walk into view, look at me, and walk away. I would see streets and buildings unfamiliar to me. Tube stations, and the like.
-after a few more days, I was able to interact with these scenes and people.
-I have to say I gave up on the project. Frankly, the scenes weren't that interesting and the people interacted with me with no more interest or notability than the average stranger at the Post Office.
-I was never able to control the people I interacted with, or my setting. Not in the slightest.
-One up side to the project----I am now able to pretty much put myself to sleep, nearly anywhere, in a matter of minutes. Watching the phosphenes, and the "Id people" is mind-blowingly relaxing once you get used to it. Before, going to sleep was an issue with me. Not anymore.

My guess is, the Arizona shooter was bonkers going in. I like to flatter myself by thinking I'm at least nominally sane. I shudder to think what someone who is mentally imbalanced sees, when they look into their abyss.

 

[Angel of Ioren]

I've had a few lucid dreams and all of them involved flying. I was so fascinated by the topic that I almost named one of my bands Lucid. Anyway, the one I remember best happened after a technique was explained to us by an English teacher i had. She said you should concentrate on your hand before going to sleep and then in a dream, try to look at your hand. After that, you should be able to gain control of the dream. It seems to have worked for me and I was able to fly around. It was quite a nice feeling. Now, it could be that it was a fluke and I was simply dreaming that I thought I was controlling my dream - that is well within the realm of possibility.

I dream a lot by the way.

 

[tyder001]

I've had lucid dreams and even prophtic dreams. (not spellin ones though) But, one of the more odd ones involved driving a car. I was going down the road and I got sleepy. I thought "This is a dream so I should just close my eyes relax" But then I had this other thought that said "What if it isn't a dream? you'll wreck." So, I pulled the car over and lay down and woke up.

 

[truthseeker]

-after a period of a few days, I began seeing unbiden images. This is, to say the least, unnerving at first. After a few minutes of hard focusing on the nothingness behind my eyelids, I began seeing things that were not products of my conscious imagination: people unknown to me would literally walk into view, look at me, and walk away. I would see streets and buildings unfamiliar to me. Tube stations, and the like.
-after a few more days, I was able to interact with these scenes and people.

This is interesting. I was reading of people using deprivation chambers where after some time of being in one they began to see images of people or places. I wonder if it's just mind playing tricks or you pick up on some reality that you're not normally in tune with...perhaps some parallel reality. Did you notice anything different about the world you were interacting with like smell, color or anything weird that caught your attention? It sounds like the people you were interacting with were aware of your presence which is a bit disturbing.

I should try doing this too, although I do find it kind of freaky that you have no control over what shows up.

 

[tyder001]

Now what or how do you concentrate on a phosphene? I googled it and found they are talking about light or burst of light? Do you try to "will" the light or concentrate on it? I know that ever since I was a child I have had "light" flood my eyes right before going to sleep or when I was deep in thought or right before dreaming. Is this what you mean?

 

[JD Thompson]

The world was pretty much the same. The 'people' there were certainly aware of me, but didn't seem too interested at all, and talking to them was pretty much a non-event. We were all just waiting around.
I wonder, actually, if my experience qualifies as lucid dreaming--because I was in fact unable to control my surroundings. Seems like to qualify, you must.


Tyder: what you describe is just about exactly what I'm talking about. On concentrating on the phosphenes: they appear as blobs of light, which move about, changing shapes. By "concentrating", I mean just watching them as they form, without trying to impose any visual influence on what you are seeing at all. don't daydream, that is to say. Don't try to move them around (because you can, after some practice). It took me a few weeks, but after a while, while I was doing that, I started zoning into this other area that I refer to as lucid dreaming (even if it's not, since I couldn't control where I went or what I did).

 

[Hotkafka]

I too have goofed around in the dreamsphere. I've also done a good deal of reading about the topic, from Yogic Dreamwork to Robert Monroe, whom I'm not entirely clear on how to classify. There is a handful of techniques to promote entry into a lucid state, and once one gains greater proficiency in entering the lucid state, techniques to explore the boundaries of dream consciousness. Boundaries are an issue of debate in the lucid dreaming community, as there seem to be a great deal of disagreement on if boundaries exist at all, or if they correlate to psychic states or trans-dimensional states of reality, and (purportedly) even spiritual planes of existence. My experimentation produced a few interesting results, beginning with the technique Angel mentioned, the ol' concentrate on your hand bit. The idea is to do this in your waking state for a few weeks to a month and over time you'll condition your brain to do it during sleep. Anyways, the thing about looking at your hand is it tends to dematerialize as your focus wanes, and well, this is sort of a trigger to let you know that you've actually entered into a dreamstate. It is extraodinarily difficult to control your dream environment because it is a reflection (or projection) of one's focus and attention -and it's difficult enough to maintain focus of one's (astral) body. Anyway, the first time I "awoke" in a dream I was blown away -as it was quite the sensation to think, feel and experience a different realm of consciousness. It was somehow more than real and even hyper-real in ways. I mucked about, checked out different objects and even flew around, popping in and visiting the various people that populated homes in the dream. Quite interesting. While developing this skill I happened to encounter a number of unexpected side effects, one of which was what could be described as astral projection. One morning I woke up, ambled into the kitchen, removed various items from the fridge and began cooking breakfast. I noticed an eerie calm and an unusual clarity to the light -and then I began to think, or realize, "hmm, I think I'm still asleep!" Sure enough, I was, and shortly after that realization I shot back into my body and then awoke. This is not unusual, as I learned from further research. In any case, it is a worthy enterprise indeed if you have the patience to develop this skill -and let me add, it's not an easy thing to learn and takes a good deal of commitment. A shortcut exists with the lucid dreaming mask, which is a mix of sleep mask and technology that alerts the dreamer when they've entered into an REM state. I've been asking for one for Xmas for years, but people don't tend to understand such requests.

Anyway, good luck with your endeavor.

 

[plumbbob12]

I am working on lucid dreaming, and have had some very good ones. This brings up the idea of alien abduction. Bear with me on this one...It is my hypothesis that our pesky alien friends really do not "wipe" our memories. If that were the case, then they do a poor job, as it seems very hit-and-miss, as some folks remember a lot of their abduction, and others not much at all.
I started thinking that maybe the EBE's are accessing that part of our subconscious where dreams come from. Just as some people remember there dreams, and others do not, so too with alien abductions. Maybe the aliens are not at all interested in our ego-self and more interested in our "real" selves which exist in what western science calls the unconscious. This would also explain the weird disconnected stuff they seem to be doing to us. After all, our waking conscious mind is just a very small part of our total reality. The Tibetans knew this, and practiced a form of “dream-yoga” which let them not only have lucid dreams, but access the very deep levels of the conscious mind that we in the west are completely unaware of, but which effects our lives. Of course, I will never obtain the data to support this hypothesis, unless of course the EBE’s land some day and fess’ up. pb
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[Hotkafka]

I am working on lucid dreaming, and have had some very good ones. This brings up the idea of alien abduction. Bear with me on this one...It is my hypothesis that our pesky alien friends really do not "wipe" our memories. If that were the case, then they do a poor job, as it seems very hit-and-miss, as some folks remember a lot of their abduction, and others not much at all.
I started thinking that maybe the EBE's are accessing that part of our subconscious where dreams come from. Just as some people remember there dreams, and others do not, so too with alien abductions. Maybe the aliens are not at all interested in our ego-self and more interested in our "real" selves which exist in what western science calls the unconscious. This would also explain the weird disconnected stuff they seem to be doing to us. After all, our waking conscious mind is just a very small part of our total reality. The Tibetans knew this, and practiced a form of “dream-yoga” which let them not only have lucid dreams, but access the very deep levels of the conscious mind that we in the west are completely unaware of, but which effects our lives. Of course, I will never obtain the data to support this hypothesis, unless of course the EBE’s land some day and fess’ up. pb
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Or perhaps Aliens are from the subconcious.... A new archetype, a symbol for the technological age.

 

[truthseeker]

I am working on lucid dreaming, and have had some very good ones. This brings up the idea of alien abduction. Bear with me on this one...It is my hypothesis that our pesky alien friends really do not "wipe" our memories. If that were the case, then they do a poor job, as it seems very hit-and-miss, as some folks remember a lot of their abduction, and others not much at all.
I started thinking that maybe the EBE's are accessing that part of our subconscious where dreams come from. Just as some people remember there dreams, and others do not, so too with alien abductions. Maybe the aliens are not at all interested in our ego-self and more interested in our "real" selves which exist in what western science calls the unconscious. This would also explain the weird disconnected stuff they seem to be doing to us. After all, our waking conscious mind is just a very small part of our total reality. The Tibetans knew this, and practiced a form of “dream-yoga” which let them not only have lucid dreams, but access the very deep levels of the conscious mind that we in the west are completely unaware of, but which effects our lives. Of course, I will never obtain the data to support this hypothesis, unless of course the EBE’s land some day and fess’ up. pb
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I think you may have something there. Our reality is far more complex than what we perceive with our brains. Our subconscious could be a gateway into dimensions of the reality that our brains just don't pick up. I think that we've only just begun to scratch the surface of our understanding and probably the scientists playing with the theoretical or fringe physics are on the forefront of this. It's almost like we have some kind of a block in our brains that puts a wall over our eyes and we're only allowed to see what we're allowed to see. Subconscious could be a way to bypass that block. Our dreams is probably one way to do it. I know that people partaking in various hallucinogenic drugs have reported seeing things, entities and worlds that we don't normally perceive.
I've really started to believe that entities that we may refer to as aliens could be part of that reality, and like you said they use our subconscious to interact with us. Of course there's really no way to prove this, but the whole strangeness of the phenomenon leads me to believe this.

 

[plumbbob12]

Yea, I get the Jacques Vallee idea of archetype, but once again, this goes back to one of my post regarding the Stanton F. Paracast show where he attempts to debunk global warming. Vallee is not a neuroscientist, just as Stanton is not a climate scientist. Both of them use three dollar words like archetype and subconscious, without really knowing the mechanisms of their terms, not to mention the idea that we do not know what the consciousness is, or where it comes from, or how it works. Vallee is trying to make an analogy with computer programming and the mind, which works for a metaphor, but fails miserably in the physical (or metaphysical world). The mind acts nothing like a computer, and the electrical signals that most neuroscientist read is only a very rough estimate of what the brain is doing in a physical sense. This would be like putting a stethoscope on a car’s engine and trying to figure out how the carburetor works. The whole idea of something being “from” another dimension is beyond our understanding. Most dimensions that string theorist talk about are so small, (close to the Plank constant), that the idea of something physical being “from” them would be a topic for a Friday night, and a good bottle of single malt scotch. pb
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[Raete]

I have lucid dreams quite often- typically in the morning. The frequency of my lucid dreams increased a lot when I got on a regular sleep schedule. I generally set my alarm about 30minutes (27 minutes to be precise- old habit- I like the odd numbers) before I need to get up for work. I usually wake up a bit before that, alarm goes off, then I fall right back into sleep and the lucid dreaming begins. I think it's probably because I'm in a kind of half asleep, half awake mode.

I also started to actively try to retain my dreams either by writing them down or by retelling myself the story over and over (while I inevitably fall back asleep...), and that seemed to kick up the frequency as well.

It feels kind of strange- sometimes I'm aware that it's a dream while it's going on, and other times I really think I'm doing what I'm dreaming. One time I even had a dream in which I was getting ready for work- and I completely let myself believe it- was almost late to work that day because I thought I was already up. When I'm in a state like that, I've found that the only thing that kicks me out of it and makes me aware that I'm dreaming and not living the situation is some kind of massive logic flaw or hypocrisy. Not strange happenings- I could have wings and fly to work and that would be totally plausible to me whilst in this state. But, for example, if I had wings and got in an airplane my brain would start to wonder why I wouldn't just fly on my own, piece things together, realize what was going on and I'd wake up.

 

[truthseeker]

I have lucid dreams quite often- typically in the morning. The frequency of my lucid dreams increased a lot when I got on a regular sleep schedule. I generally set my alarm about 30minutes (27 minutes to be precise- old habit- I like the odd numbers) before I need to get up for work. I usually wake up a bit before that, alarm goes off, then I fall right back into sleep and the lucid dreaming begins. I think it's probably because I'm in a kind of half asleep, half awake mode.

I also started to actively try to retain my dreams either by writing them down or by retelling myself the story over and over (while I inevitably fall back asleep...), and that seemed to kick up the frequency as well.

It feels kind of strange- sometimes I'm aware that it's a dream while it's going on, and other times I really think I'm doing what I'm dreaming. One time I even had a dream in which I was getting ready for work- and I completely let myself believe it- was almost late to work that day because I thought I was already up. When I'm in a state like that, I've found that the only thing that kicks me out of it and makes me aware that I'm dreaming and not living the situation is some kind of massive logic flaw or hypocrisy. Not strange happenings- I could have wings and fly to work and that would be totally plausible to me whilst in this state. But, for example, if I had wings and got in an airplane my brain would start to wonder why I wouldn't just fly on my own, piece things together, realize what was going on and I'd wake up.

That's interesting how you mention that your lucid dreaming occurs typically in the morning. I find that a lot of my vivid dreams - I wouldn't describe them lucid - have typically occurred right before I need to wake up, and in a lot of cases I usually have dreams if I fall asleep after my alarm goes off. My dreams during that particular time period have also had a high level of strangeness about them and they've usually lasted no more than 20-30 minutes. In a lot of cases those dreams also carry a high sense of urgency - almost like they need to teach or convey something of importance to me.

 

[stiver]

-after a period of a few days, I began seeing unbiden images. This is, to say the least, unnerving at first. After a few minutes of hard focusing on the nothingness behind my eyelids, I began seeing things that were not products of my conscious imagination: people unknown to me would literally walk into view, look at me, and walk away. I would see streets and buildings unfamiliar to me. Tube stations, and the like.
-after a few more days, I was able to interact with these scenes and people.

Thank you, JD Thompson. This is an excellent description of what I have observed all my life upon falling asleep. For many years I was searching for someone who is also aware of these visions. Some people call them hypnagogic images but I am not sure they always mean the same thing. In some sources they describe hypnagogia as directly related to sleep paralysis but from my experience they are not necessary dependant on each other. I am usually able to observe these places and people before becoming REM paralyzed. In some instances I was even able to talk and describe what I was observing. The most staggering about them is their superb 3D realism and the level of detail, although, they are never anything I have ever seen in my life before. I have to say that I find these visions more enigmatic than any other type of dreams. After decades of "looking" at them almost every night, I'm still in awe, and still unable to find a good explanation for how the brain is able to render such ultra-realistic animation in real time.

Also, I strongly suspect that such visions might be responsible for some encounters, which some people describe as alien visitations. As I mentioned, I'm certain that these images can occur before sleep paralysis. For this, IMO, some experiencers so adamantly and probably justifiably object the sleep paralysis hypothesis.

I have experimented with lucid dreaming for several years and I have successfully induced a highly realistic lucid dream of alien encounter (without the negative aspects). The difference from a regular alien dream is that one is fully conscious even if she doesn't realize that is dreaming. That means that the dreamer can consciously observe, reason, make decisions, and after that remember all details of the dream. The events enfold in a regular linear time which additionally adds to the realism of the experience. I can easily envision how a semi conscious dream can be interpreted as a real alien encounter.

From what I've learned in the years I practiced it, there are several different techniques to induce a lucid dream. The easiest way for me to become conscious quickly and when I need it is the following. I go to sleep at regular time. Before that, I set my alarm clock to wake me up after only 4-5 hours of sleep. When I wake up, I must get up from bed for about 25-30 minutes. In that time I think intensively about conscious dreaming, read something in a book or on the internet about it, or simply smoke a cigarette on the balcony and think only about how I am going to realize in the dream that I am dreaming and what I'm going to do in the dream - if I chose to fly, where to fly, who to meet, what to experiment with. I don't think "If I become lucid." I think "When I become lucid, I will..." After that I go back to bed, turn off the lights and fall asleep again. The first minutes it seems like it's impossible to fall asleep any more, but only in a short time I'm already dreaming and at some point I realize that I am dreaming.

The simple explanation for why this usually works with most people is that our body needs about 7-8 hours of sleep every night, while the brain needs only about 5 hours. When we wake up the first time, our body still needs to rest, but our brain becomes alert enough to regain consciousness and remember what it's supposed to do.