Lucid Dreaming
Wikipedia states the following:
A lucid dream is a dream during which one is aware that one is dreaming. During a lucid dream, one may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, and environment.
I have had many lucid dreams. Lucid dreaming consists predominantly of the awareness of the fact that one is dreaming. Has anyone here experienced a lucid dream?
I feel as though lucid dreaming can be enlightening. There is the awareness of a dream and that one can control it? Doesn't it imply that we are all able to dictate how we perceive life? For me, lucid dreaming is an ad hoc assertion of the fact that God might exist. Does the fact that you can dictate what kind of reality you perceive, indicative of the reality that you exist in?
Lucid dreaming is specifically about the contents of one's self. Some common ways at which one can ascertain one is dreaming is reality checking. Reality checking consists in the ability to discern waking reality from a dream. Some common methods include holding one's nose with one's mouth shut, to check if one is breathing during a dream. During a dream, one can do this reality check and find out that one can still breath.
Lucid dreaming is a phenomenon that I want to analyze. What are your thoughts about it?
A lucid dream is a dream during which one is aware that one is dreaming. During a lucid dream, one may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, and environment.
I have had many lucid dreams. Lucid dreaming consists predominantly of the awareness of the fact that one is dreaming. Has anyone here experienced a lucid dream?
I feel as though lucid dreaming can be enlightening. There is the awareness of a dream and that one can control it? Doesn't it imply that we are all able to dictate how we perceive life? For me, lucid dreaming is an ad hoc assertion of the fact that God might exist. Does the fact that you can dictate what kind of reality you perceive, indicative of the reality that you exist in?
Lucid dreaming is specifically about the contents of one's self. Some common ways at which one can ascertain one is dreaming is reality checking. Reality checking consists in the ability to discern waking reality from a dream. Some common methods include holding one's nose with one's mouth shut, to check if one is breathing during a dream. During a dream, one can do this reality check and find out that one can still breath.
Lucid dreaming is a phenomenon that I want to analyze. What are your thoughts about it?
Comments (44)
Dreams used to be so great though. So stunningly brilliant and full of absurd enigma. Now we have movies to replace them.
[quote=Zhuangzi]Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things.[/quote]
[quote=Zhuangzi]Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense![/quote]
Jorge Luis Borges (an idealist master of meta narratives):
Cut back on the weed bro.
Certainly there is a present difference between being lucid versus non-lucid. For example, I can in this present moment either lose myself in a book, or I can scrutinise my environment and check as to whether my experiences cohere with my memories and understanding.
But does it make sense to assert that one can remember being lucid?
One way for me to tell that I am dreaming is that I feel fundamentally "happy" when I dream. I feel free from the constraints of reality and can explore something at ease whilst in my dream.
Does anyone else feel "happy" in their dreams? It is a peculiar sense of happiness. Like, when one falls in love or something like that. A spontaneous sense of happiness, just for its own sake.
I'm sorry to hear that. One of the main reasons I abstain from smoking pot is due to not wanting to interfere with my dream recall.
Quoting Wallows
Haven't smoked weed in more than a decade. Don't jump to conclusions.
Never meant to intend that. I didn't assume you smoked pot. Sorry.
However since as long as I can remember I have tried to actually dream lucid but forcing it to happen has never worked out for me. It is only since the past year (2022, for reference sake) that I have been able to experience the phenomenon as it has happened to me twice now and with the second time being last night, hence me posting in this very topic. Both times the lucidity during the dream happened spontaneously and while I was able to stretch the dream(time) significantly the first time, and was actually able to instantly alter the dream-scenario, it wasnt exactly like that last night as in fact I used the lucidity to let myself fall with the intention to end the dreamstate. Within the dream I became stuck at great height, which was also the moment I became aware that I was dreaming, and while that was so I saw no other solution than to let myself fall to free myself of the situation as I was unable to alter anything at all.
The thing gnawing at me since I woke up is the fact that I am afraid of heights en that becoming stuck at that height scared the living daylight out of me and that (ironically) it most probably was the fear of heights at that particular moment in the dream inducing the lucidity in the first place. The decision to let myself fall down I can reason through, as I knew that I was dreaming and that the fall would end the dream, but the absence of fear, throwing myself down while looking down atleast a hundred meters or so, right after the realisation of what it would take and the decision to actually do so, absolutely blows my mind. I woke up right away from the moment I started to fall and just as contradictory as actually letting myself fall, despite my fear of heights, is the fact that I instantly felt it a shame to not have experienced the entire fall down...
I'm actually hoping for both of these experiences to be the prelude for more of the same.
You are aware that it is a dream and so definitely not reality, and that you can control the dream, which is not reality, and somehow you see that as implying that you can control reality...
No, I'm not seeing that.
I've had lucid dreams, and the thing that stuck me was that I was aware it was a dream. SO I could decide to summon storms with a thought or uproot trees with the wave of a hand, because it was a dream. Such fun.
What it tells us is that dreams are not reality, and perhaps more importantly for you, reality is not a dream that you can control with a though.
I don't see that it tells us anything about god, except perhaps that it might be fun to be one.
I have naturally occurring lucid dreams every night; they're like movies, they are movies, inside my head.
I'd like to remark that lucidity and control are two different things. Sometimes one can manifest easily out of dream consciousness, other times, the things that you want to see in your dreams do not appear upon trying to control them. I learned not so much as to try and control the dream as to let the dream happen on its own.
There is also something known as dream interpretation. Its one interpretation of why dreams happen, they are symbolic for our real life situations. One dream I have that reoccurs is of a Tsunamis. Indicating, symbolizing a present fear of things to come. Currently my other dreams are a bit wacky, time travel, worm-holes, robots, and the like. These I recall most easily because they reoccur.
One key to mastering lucidity is utilizing your normal life experience as a template for dream experience.
Dream well.
Lucidity also comes at the cost of creativity; the more lucid I am, the less interesting and surprising is the dream environment, dream characters lose their autonomy and stop speaking for themselves and I stop hearing novel music. Everything creative and interesting that happens seems to stem from a state of uncontrolled and dissociated non-lucidity in which the self and it's agenda aren't present. For purposes of creativity for it's own sake, i suspect that the ideal amount of lucidity is just enough to start the dreaming process off in a vaguely desired direction and to recall what happened afterwords.
Getting back to the question as to what lucidity is, there are obviously several semi-independent dimensions to the concept, e.g volition, control, vividness and recall, all of which present to some extent in ordinary dreams, and which come at the cost of other dream qualities e.g 'surprisingness' and 'subjectedness' ; isn't it better to ditch the general concept of lucidity for these separate concepts?
Yeah, I wish more often.
Most of the time it happens when I am woken up in the morning for some reason, am up for a while, and go back to bed.
Quoting sime
For me lucid dreaming means being aware that I am dreaming while I am dreaming, regardless of how vivid or in control of the dream I am.
Those seem like 3 useful factors: Degree of awareness that are dreaming, vividness, and degree of control.
I've had times where I almost became lucid, suspecting I was in a dream. Maybe this can be called semi-lucidity.
One time when I suspected I was dreaming something philosophically interesting happened. I found an authentication of reality code in my dream, which I was convinced was proof that my dream was the real world!
Quoting Josh Alfred
I used to have recurring tsunami dreams too!
I think this is interesting from the standpoint of how the mind can control your own physical reactions in a lucid dream state
Never heard about it before but it might be worth a try, I would love to expand on my experiences thus far.
A dream come true :naughty: :yum:
Well, I can only speak for myself but I do experience lucid dreams and I seem to remember dream details quite well and quite often. I can fight and kill threats in my dreams but it's often a 'replay.' I can have a nightmare and become aware and unhappy at the outcome so I can reset the dream to a particular stage and kick the f*** out the monster who attacked me earlier, for example.
I wont give the details of how far I can get with an erotic dream unless pushed to but suffice to say that's it is not good enough to replace the best of what I have experienced between myself(male) and a woman, who are both consenting and conscious at the time of course.
I would love to be able to get such experiences. Up until now whenever I have a nightmare it is always about unseen threats and any erotic content manifests itself exclusively during periods of sexual abstinence. To be able to will such dreams or atleast direct it the way I want it to presents itself high on my list of most wanted experiences. Btw I have also never experienced the same erotic quality in dreams compared to the physical world though I have never been lucid during such dreams either.
The key to what? And with whom?
I seemed to develop lucid dreaming from my late 20's onwards (I am now 58.)
I remember having a lot of nightmares as a child and I got a 'bout' of them again as a teenager and again in my late 20's. I got kind of 'fed-up,' with the quite intense at times, discomfort, I experienced.
I heard about lucid dreaming, I cant remember from where but I started a routine before I fell asleep. I kept thinking to myself that I wanted to know if I was dreaming. I fell asleep trying to maintain that thought. I was kind of trying to 'train my brain,' to do what I wanted it to. I cant remember how long it took but eventually I realised, during a dream, that I was aware I was dreaming and I kind of thanked my brain for doing what I asked. it kind of developed from that point. I then deliberately tried to 'set my brain' to 'lucid dreaming' mode almost every night. Sometimes it worked, sometimes I had no dreams at all. Then I forgot all about the whole thing. I would then experience a lucid dream every so often and I enjoyed the experience so much I went back into trying to set my brain to lucid mode again, before falling asleep. Its now about two or three times a month I will have a lucid dream, more regularly, I just dream random BS but I still remember most of the details of the dream. Sometimes my lucid dreams give me new insight or ideas about recent stuff I have been thinking about during the day.
So I think you can train yourself to dream lucidly. I was eventually able to concentrate during an erotic lucid dream to see how long I could make it continue, with one or two surprising results.
Quoting Seeker
I think this is true, you need to be able to know you are dreaming and focus/concentrate on what you want to happen and if the dream scene changes you must be able to realise that and direct it back to the scenes you were trying to control. You may have to figure out how to connect the switched scene and the scenes you are trying to return to. Sometimes I can even remember a dream and concentrate on its main story/characters/important events before I fall asleep (but you have got to be kind of relaxed about it) and then I will have the same dream again and attempt to make it play out the way I want it to. It's good for building personal self-confidence but it does not always work.
I do hope so and I'm gonna try as well but I also wonder about the genetic components involved and any possible inhibitions because of it. After having experienced lucidity a few times allready I'm a bit more confident about it but I'm still having a bit of a hard time imagining the amount of control you describe. I'm also past my 50's and was never able to will anything during the dreamstate, just until very recently that is and then it happened spontaneous.
Sounds like an earlier but familiar stage. Keep at it, its fun, harmless and can generate rewards. It can also actually help you fall asleep as one part of your brain try's to instruct other parts.
For me, lucid dreaming was more pragmatic than philosophical. Years ago, I had been reading about human attempts to fly like a bird, and also about the physics of wings. So, one night, I consciously imagined my "Self" on a sloping grassy field with a winged apparatus, similar to Leonardo's, on my back. As I slipped into a half-dream, I ran down the hill and lifted off. Then, I flew soundlessly above the tree tops, and heard dogs barking below. It was so cool, I wanted to do it again. It was easy to flap & fly in the dream, but not very practical in real life, for the pectorially-deficient.
Therefore, on subsequent nights, I began to add a battery-powered back-pack, and to redesign the wings themselves, in order to make them more functional. Since, bat-wings were not ideal for my purposes, and I couldn't fabricate frilly feathers -- I told you this was a pragmatic dream -- I used something more like thin flexible over-lapping scales. Long story short, I continued to experience the ethereal feeling of flying, without ever leaving the ground -- or crashing. And I wasn't hallucinating, so the experience was no more mystical than an ordinary dream.
Consequently, my philosophical insight was that sentient dreaming was merely my brain creating fictional stories out of semi-random bits of personal experience and learned knowledge, plus a subliminal desire or remembered intention. If I had been taking a hallucinogenic drug, like ayahuasca, I might have later believed that I had been magically transformed into a bird or a jaguar. But, my bed-bound "trips" were merely mundane fantasies that I had some conscious control over. :cool:
So, imagine similar experiences a few thousand years ago and you have just explained where the details of the majority of all god fables originate. A mix of lucid dreaming and eating some magic mushrooms along with your meat and veg.
source: deepluciddreaming.con
Thanks.
I also tend to think this way. I started to practice lucid dreaming maybe around 15 years ago, and first encounters were very intense and immediately turned me into some type of idealist. It was clear to me that the reality is a dream of sort. So when we are awake, we just dream a bit different type of dreams, stable and objective dreams. The material that causes dreams is just different, but the mechanism is the same. Anyone how practices lucid dreaming knows that dreams feel the same as the reality, even more so.
This is basically still how I see it. When we sleep, the material of dreams are subjective artefacts and some random brain activity, and when we are awake, the dream material is more stable and objective. I don't really know what to make out of this. It can be interpreted in realist framework, or maybe transcendental idealist framework. Either way, the phenomenal reality is made out of the same stuff that our dreams, there's no difference in qualitative terms. This may sound obvious to some people, but it was a revelation for me.
This is very pragmatic for me, it is just how things are, but I still get very excited with lucid dreams. Nowadays I never try to actively engage with the dreams, I just let them happen and observe.
According to Freud and Jung, aren't the lucid dreaming the evidence for the existence of different types of consciousness?, viz, conscious, subconscious, collective unconscious, objective psyche ..etc.
I have seen some folks trying to make the predictions for their future by interpreting their dreams.
For me personally, I sometimes have lucid dreams, and it can be very entertaining in the dreams. When I wake up, and the dream which was so lucid, vivid and entertaining disappears from the mind can give disappointment for the day in real life.
Having lucid dreams is not daily events. It seems to be happening when one is more spiritual and mentally active than the normal times. Could it be sign for one's consciousness extending into the Noumenon and attempting to perceive the contents of Thing-in-itself?
There are people who claim to have met God in their lucid dreams. But obviously and unfortunately the claims cannot be verified in objective sense. All minds are locked up in one's own brain, and no one can access to it apart from the owner of the mind.
The lucid dreams recounted in my previous post were pragmatic and intentional, because I had been consciously trying to solve the obstacles to flying silently like a bird. Human flight, since the Wright brothers, had always relied on noisy machines instead of innate muscle power. Today, electric flying machines with closed-loop propellers are getting close to the ancient dream of flying like a bird.
In my not-so-ancient waking dream, while noiselessly flying above the tree-tops, I could hear the wind whispering, and sounds on the ground, not to mention seeing peripherally, without window-framing the view. These dreams had been inspired in part by the novel sensations of flying in my brother's single engine airplane, where the noise was intrusive, and made communication difficult, and the view was restricted.
Some time later, and no drugs involved, I began to repeatedly dream that I could fly, more like superman, just by pure willpower. And it felt great --- no rackety engines or even flapping wings. In that case, I was no longer trying to solve pragmatic problems, just enjoying the feeling. Now, years later, I still have brief lucid dreams, mostly during a gradual wake-up. But I don't focus on details, just go with the flow. :smile:
PS__ Years ago, I read an article about the use of Ayahuasca in South America, where indians imagined they could fly like a condor and prowl like a jaguar. Apparently, the drug stimulated something like a lucid dream, which was viewed as a spiritual reality by the drug user. Today, it's a recreational drug with spiritual implications, for those so inclined.
Soul Quest Ayahuasca Church
Orlando Florida
https://www.ayahuascachurches.org/
I have had such a dream and what I find interesting is how one can experience other forms of consciousness, or other forms of experience than what we are used to.
For example in one dream I was lifted up out of my world by the Christ and as I looked back I could see my life laid out beneath us as though different experiences at different times were side by side, or in separate rooms and my whole life was visible in some sense. The perception I had was as if we stepped out of time and all time was before us like a landscape.
These experiences are difficult to describe as I am trying to relay something inconceivable to us as we are. The explanation I like to think of and which is described in religious text is of being hosted by a higher being. Such that one experiences something of their consciousness.
That sounds like a really interesting and meaningful dream. I wonder if you are into mysticism and spiritualism and deeply religious too, although I don't think one need to be committed to any religion for experiencing such powerful vivid dreams.
Freud tends to describe dreams in connection to sexuality and the hidden desires of human mind. But Jung says a lot about dreams in conjunction with the existence of souls, afterlife, life before one's birth, psychological alchemy, and collective unconscious. Jung's psychology is also based on theology and the world spirit.
I have a few books on Jung, and might go back to reading him again. It is an interesting topic, if you are into it, and want to know more.
Yes I found Jung interesting, I did keep a dream journal and explore dreaming and lucid dreaming in those days. I had experiences like the others in the thread had. As I say I found the more transcendent aspects the most interesting as part of my spiritual journey.
Saw a good video in Youtube on Jung's psychology of Dreams.