Lucid Dreaming

Lucid dreaming facts, myths, history, and techniques

An introduction to lucid dreaming, or the art of being conscious while dreaming. Definitions, popular teaching methods, myths and fallacies, and the history of lucid dreaming is covered here.

Lucid dreaming is the art of being conscious while dreaming. While this curious ability has been noted for thousands of years, only in the last generation has lucid dreaming gained the attention of mainstream audiences. But how can we be aware while we are sleeping? This paradox is why lucid dreaming was not believed by the scientific community for years. Under scrutiny and pressure, psychophysiologist Stephen LaBerge demonstated the state of consciousness in 1981 by an ingenious experiment with an EEG machine. Since then, LaBerge and other lucid dream researchers have successfully shown that not only is lucid dreaming a verifiable state of consciousness, but the skills of lucid dreaming can be learned by those who have good dream recall.

Before moving on to why lucid dreaming is important and how it can be utilized as a tool for self-development and self-knowledge, here is a list of definitions of lucid dreams throughout history. This list shows how not everyone agrees what "lucidity" is in the first place, as well as the cultural variants and personal characteristics of different dreamers.

Lucid Dreaming Definitions

Aristotle, 4th century BCE, Treatise on dreams
“If the sleeper perceives he is asleep, and is conscious of the sleeping state during which the perception comes before his mind, it presents itself still, but something within him speaks to this effect: ‘The image of Koriskos presents itself, but the real Koriskos is not present.’”

St. Thomas Aquinas, 15th century, Letters
“not only does the imagination retain its freedom, but also the common sense is partially freed; so that sometimes while asleep a man may judge that what he sees is a dream, discerning as it were, between things and their images”

Friedrich Nietszche, 1870, Birth of a tragedy
“And perhaps many a one, like myself, recollect having sometimes called out cheeringly and not without success amid the dangers and terrors of dream life: ‘It is a dream! I will dream on!’”

Sigmund Freud, 1909, Interpretation of Dreams, introduction to 2nd edition
“There are some people who are quite clearly aware during the night that they are asleep and dreaming and who thus seem to possess the faculty of consciously directing their dreams.”

Frederick van Eeden, 1913, A study of dreams
A “lucid dream” is when “The sleeper remembers day-life and his own condition, reaches a state of perfect awareness, and is able to direct his attention and to attempt different acts of free volition."

Oliver Fox, 1930s
“Dreams of knowledge” occur when “Secure in the consciousness of my true condition and the knowledge that I could always wake if danger threatened, moving like a little God through the glorious scenery of the dream world.”

Paul Tholey, 1981
Lucid dreaming must include “full awareness of the dream state, awareness of the possibility of making free decisions, clear consciousness of the dreamer, perception by all senses, full memory of waking life, full memory of all lucid dream experiences in the waking state and in the lucid dream state, awareness of the meaning of symbols.”

Jayne Gackenbach, 1991, Lucidity
“A dream during which one knows one is dreaming while the dream is ongoing.”

Michael Winkelman, 2000, Shamanism
Lucid dreaming exemplifies “shamanic consciousness” as it “integrates the potentials of dreaming and waking consciousness.”

Why is Lucid Dreaming Valuable?

As the definitions above suggest, lucid dreaming is many things to many people. Indeed, the plasticity of the state of consciousness is so great that lucid dream researchers have had a difficult time agreeing what are the most important aspects of lucid dreaming, which of those aspects are central to the experience, and which are more a product of individual or cultural differences.

For example, how important is dream control to the experience of lucid dreaming? For Freud, it was central (although he never claimed to have a lucid dream himself.) Others focus on the dual awareness of knowing you are dreaming while actually laying in bed. For other psychologists, such as Michael Winkelman, dream control pales in comparison to the integrative possibilities of being aware while dreaming.

So the value of lucid dreaming really lays in its variability. Here is a list of applications of lucid dreaming that many people today find valuable.

Facing fears
Exploring the dream world
Creatively and safely engage in sexual fantasies
Finding inspiration for puzzles, scientific problems, or works of art
Composing music
Experiencing flying and other super-human possibilities
Contacting ancestors
Asking for spiritual guidance
Deep meditative practice

Many theraputic applications of lucid dreaming have been researched as well, such as:

Facing the past for emotionally "stuck" individuals
Developing courage for sexual assault victims
Experiencing bodily freedom for quadraplegics and the wheelchair-bound
Overcoming Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome for soldiers and abuse victims
Visualizing physical therapy improvements
Reducing nightmares, night terrors, and sleep paralysis

Myths About Lucid Dreaming

Many myths about lucid dreaming can be found online. I mean "myths" as "stories we tell ourselves and make true by believing them" as well as patently untrue statements.

Myth 1: Lucid dreaming cannot be learned. This is not true, and in fact many researchers, most notably Stephen LaBerge, have built their careers by teaching good ways to learn how to lucid dream.

Myth 2: Lucid dreaming means you can control your dream. This is a half-truth. A better way to imagine the experience is that you have more self-control in a lucid dream. You can make active choices rather than going along for the ride. Volition is an important part of lucid dreaming, but most people cannot "control" every aspect of the dream as it manifests. However, many lucid dreamers report being able to create new dream scenes, as well as transform dream objects. But beware: with each intended transformation comes some unintended ones. The dream is simply too complex to completely control through conscious volition.

Myth 3: You might be able to have sex in a lucid dream, but you can't have an orgasm. Not true, it's been documented, repeatedly, in the sleep lab. Most people wake up before orgasm because they are too excited, or they believe it's impossible.

Myth 4: Light switches don't work in lucid dreams - that's a good way to find out if your are dreaming. Not true, this is an example of expectation, and is one of the most pervasive modern myths about lucid dreams.

Myth 5: If you die during a lucid dream, you can die in real life. Also not true. In fact, I recommend it. Your body is safely in REM paralysis during most lucid dreams. There is also not one reported case of someone losing their grip on reality or succumbing to insanity through the practice of lucid dreaming. Bottomline: lucid dreaming is not physically dangerous.

History of Lucid Dreaming

Lucid dreaming has a long and storied history. Some of this material I have published before on the web. If you want more information, check out the references at the bottom of this knol.

Hinduism and Buddhism

The first known textual description of lucid dreaming dates to before 1000 BCE from the Upanishads, the Hindu oral tradition of spiritual lessons, philosophy and proverbs. The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra is another ancient Hindu tract that describes how best to direct consciousness within the dream and vision states of sleep.

In the early centuries, Indian influence spread to the mountainous region of Tibet, where the animistic tradition of Bönpo maintains that lucid dreaming has been used in their meditations for over 12000 years.

The textual legacy that has survived the cultural fusion of this shamanic practice with Buddhism is the Tibetan Book of the Dead, conservatively dated to the 8th century. The partial translation of this esoteric track in 1935 by Walter Y. Evans-Wentz was the first time a Western audience, primarily historians and occultists, learned of these ancient practices. These ancient dream practices later influenced dream scholars in the 20th century, especially with the Humanistic and Transpersonal schools of American psychology.

Classic Greece and Islam

In the West, the concept of lucid dreams is almost as old as Western letters itself. In general, dreams had a privileged position in the foundations of Greek philosophy; Socrates, Plato and Aristotle all addressed their inquiries into the nature of reality to our nightly journeys. Lucid dreams were first clearly described by Aristotle (350BC), in his treatise On Dreams. Aristotle writes, “when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which tells us that what presents itself is but a dream.”

A few centuries later, in 415AD, the first lucid dream report was recorded, from one of St Augustine’s patients.

Lucid dreaming may have played an integral part of the history of Islam. Mohammed’s Laylat al-Miraj is an account of a nighttime vision that provided him with spiritual initiation. The 12th century Spanish Sufi Ib El-Arabi suggested that controlling thought in dreams is an essential ability for aspiring mystics.

Three hundred years later, Sufi mystic Shamsoddin Lahiji recorded an inspiring night vision of the heavens that also may have been a lucid dream experience. Due to cultural and historical differences between the distinction of visions and dreams it is impossible to know for sure if this account, as well as Mohammed’s, occurred during sleep or vision states, but they are certainly lucid.

The dark ages of lucidity

Despite these strong classic beginnings, the study of lucid dreaming became stifled by the dominant religious atmosphere after the rise of Imperial Rome. Judea-Christian culture came to hold a suspicion about dreams, as theologians opined that that some dreams had access to higher truths, but others were false.

In the Middle Ages, Thomas Acquinas reinforced this opinion, suggesting that some dreams come from demons. After this warning on high, the Christian West’s concern with dreams lay dormant for centuries, and lucid dreaming went underground.

This misconception of dreams is probably the single greatest reason why Western culture still ignores dreams and why many superstitions about dreams persist. In many Christenized cultures today, for instance, lucid dreaming is still associated with satanism and witchcraft.

Lucid Dreams in the Enlightenment

In the seventeenth century, lucid dreams began to surface again, this time couched within the European culture of reason. Many dreamers shelved old superstitions and began to look inward again (or at least talk about such explorations openly). Pierre Gassendi and Thomas Reid are two Enlightenment era philosophers who discussed having waking-life levels of scrutiny and cognition within their dreams.

Interestingly, Rene Descartes, who is most famously regarded as being dismissive of subjective reality, actually wrote passionately about his lucid dreams in a private journal known today as the Olympica. Some dream researchers, such as Kelly Bulkeley and Harry Hunt, have suggested that Descartes’ lucid dreams helped him frame his scientific method that was born from the statement “Cogito ergo sum.”

A more accurate statement from Descartes’ early days may be “Somnio, ergo sum.” I dream, therefore I am. Descartes kept his dream investigations secret to his dying days, perhaps due to the intense social pressure of the Church as well as his scientific circle.

This is only a brief, sweeping history of the early days of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming has been no doubt practiced in hundreds of more settings, but it is actually our dim Western view of dreams that enable the concept of “lucid” dreams in the first place.

In many other cultures, historic and contemporary, dreams are considered to be paths to knowledge, and dream incubation is common, so there is no need for the term “lucidity.” This is one of the ironic truths of lucid dreams; conceptually they exist primarily in relief of “ordinary dreams” which are dull, passive, and without import. In this way, lucid dreaming can be seen as a rediscovery of ancient practices as well as a recovery of our dreaming senses.

Nineteeth Century Lucid Dreamers

The 19th century is really the dawn of modern dream research. Few major psychologists discussed lucid dreaming, except Sigmund Freud, who only mentioned the topic once, in a brief and skeptical endnote in the second edition of his Interpretation of Dreams. The history of lucid dreaming would be very different if Freud himself was a lucid dreamer,

To Freud's credit, he tried repeatedly to secure a copy of Hervey de Saint-Denys' book Dreams and how to guide them, written in 1897. This work is one of the gems of the era. Alas, it was not meant to be and Freud never read it.

The ethnographer Saint Denys was a prolific conscious dreamer, and he used his dreams as a scientific instrument. He tested theories in his dreams and made observations about what happened. Saint Denys' research was focused on memory and language, much like our modern neuropsychiatry.

Another notable nineteenth century dreamer was Frederic van Eeden, who was the first to use the term “lucid dream.” His long and detailed dream reports are fascinating to read, and clearly indicate an interest in the natural experience of lucid dreaming. van Eeden’s work focuses on sensations and emotions, not only his attempts to influence the content of the dream. Both of Saint-Denys and van Eeden’s works were marginalized during their lifetimes; in fact they were sometimes ridiculed at public scientific gatherings. Yet their work deeply influenced 20th century dream research.

The Psychedelic Sixties

Lucid dreaming was mentioned by a few more writers in the next few decades (notably Oliver Fox), but really it was the cultural zeitgeist of the postwar era that re-ignited public interest in lucid dreaming. One product of 20th century military colonialization was a renewed interest in indigenous peoples and traditional societies. With this flood of anthropological studies came bizarre stories of trance states, sorcery and the use of psychotropic plants.

In particular, the work of Carlos Castaneda galvanized a generation about new possibilities in consciousness and spirituality. In the United States and Europe, this underground academic movement culminated in “the Psychedelic Sixties." Humanist and Transpersonal Psychologies were also established in this era, focusing on positive psychology, human potential, and altered states of consciousness.

In this expansive cultural climate, Celia Greene’s phenomenological study of lucid dreams was published in 1968, popularizing van Eeden’s term from fifty years prior. Transpersonal psychologist Charles Tart compounded the popular interest in lucid dreaming by publishing his highly influential Altered States of Consciousness, which reprints van Eeden’s essay in full as well as anthropologist Kilton Stewart’s essay on lucid dreams as practiced by the Malaysian Senoi.

Like Castaneda, Stewart was a charismatic figure who influenced a generation of anthropologists and psychologists, even though both of their original works are now considered to be fictional , or at least highly imaginative accounts of their fieldwork experiences. Regardless, these two mercurial figures cast a long shadow in modern lucid dreaming studies.

Twentieth Century psychology

Lucid dreaming research was made a reputable course of scientific study when psycho-physiologist Stephen LaBerge and British parapsychologist Keith Hearne independently validated lucid dreaming by having subjects signal during lucid dreams while EEG monitors verified their mental states as REM sleep.

LaBerge’s ongoing work with the psycho-physiological domains of lucid dreaming has been particularly fruitful to cognitive psychology, leading to advances in mind/brain mapping and linguistic-cognitive studies.

The scientific legitimization of lucid dreaming added fuel to the fire, and the 1980s and early 1990s was characterized by a flurry of lucid dream research from every conceivable perspective. For example, influential lucid dream studies are represented in the areas of transpersonal psychology, sports psychology, cognition studies, and nightmare treatment.

The work of German psychologist Paul Tholey marks another important boundary-push of the possibilities in lucid dreaming. Tholey's work focuses on personality, intentionality, and he also engaged in many self-studies where he documented the destruction of the "ego core" in his lucid dreams. He also proved that dreams occur in color, using lucid dreaming as his techniwue to get reliable and fresh data. Sadly, Tholey passed away in the 1998, and no one has yet translated much of his important work into English.

However, while popular publications about lucid dreaming exploded on the mass market, formal academic research into the dream state cooled considerably once the interdisciplinary journal Lucidity Letter closed its doors in 1991. This journal published ten years of innovative lucid dreaming studies, ranging from physiology to clinical reports, further inspiring the contemporary dream movement.

Lucid Dreaming Techniques

Given that lucid dreaming is learnable skill, and there is so many reasons why someone might learn how to navigate their dreams when they become conscious, much of the work done this decade has been determining the best and most reliable methods of inducing lucid dreams. Partially this passion for training grew out of sleep psychologists' own interests since running a dream lab is expensive and trained lucid dreamers are at a premium. Also, Stephen LaBerge, arguably the most important researcher behind the topic, has made it his goal to make lucid dreaming as mainstream as possible. Because of this focus, we can consider LaBerge to be the Timothy Leary of the dream world. Turn on, tune in, and take a nap.

Laberge's work is widely published all over the web, so I encourage everyone to check out his website as the best place to learn lucid dreaming techniques. I'll list a few of my personal favorite techniques below.

Develop good dream recall

This is more of a prerequisite than a technique. It is difficult to become aware you are dreaming if you cannot remember your dreams in the first place. Accepted ways to increase dream recall include dream journalling when you wake up, or start with jotting notes down in the middle of the night. Also, when you wake up, stay in the same body position while you recall your dreams. If you hop right out of bed, you will probably lose most of your dream recall. Everyone dreams, yes, everyone, so make a strong intention to remember those dreams.

Become More Aware During the Day

This is called "reality testing" and it is an effective way to increase spontaneous lucid dreams. The truth is that most of us are not very aware as we go about our daily lives. How aware of your surroundings are you when you are eating lunch? Shopping? Driving? By taking a second and thinking something like, "I am aware right now," you are training your mind to become more aware during dreams as well. This is why many historic religious approaches consider lucid dreaming to be an indication of good meditation and "waking up."

Carlos Casteneda popularized a good reality check in his book The Power of Dreaming. Simply look at your hands and think, or say outloud (even better), "I am aware." Do it until you really mean it. The nice thing about hands is you always have them around.

Another effective technique that works for me and many others is noticing everytime you pass through a doorway. This is hard at first, and really shows how unaware we are in our everyday patterns. I've had many lucid dreams emerge from my habit of noticing these thresholds.

Discover Your Dream Signs for Lucidity

This technique is for those who have had a couple lucid dreams already. Dream signs are signals that you are dreaming. Usually these signs are elements of the bizarre, perceptual anomolies, or other personal symbols. One for me is dreaming that I'm looking in the mirror and obsessing about my teeth. I've trained myself to think, "when my teeth are messed up, I'm dreaming, " so when I have this dream, I become aware I'm dreaming. You can stregthen the dream signs that have led to lucid dreams in the past, or try developing new ones. For instance, you might study an image and say, "The next time I see this, I'm dreaming."

Take Naps and Sleep In When You Can

There's no way around it: good lucid dreamers are good sleepers. On weekends or days off, try going back to sleep after waking up at your normal time. The extra sleep will probably have an extended period of dreaming. Also, afternoon naps are frequently REM sleep and result in high levels of lucid dreams for many.

I personally have had great success with waking up, reading for 15 minutes or so, and then going back to sleep. Especially effective if the reading material is about lucid dreams. The reading activates the frontal cortex which is the seat of analytical awareness, so you are more likely to stay aware immediately afterwards.

Set a Strong Intention To Become Lucid

There are many, many more lucid dreaming techniques out there, including using technological devices, taking supplements, and even going to sleep with a full bladder. However, I have found that none of these are effective unless you know how to set an intention before you go to bed. This is the single-most important indicator of becoming aware in dreams, and only you can tell if your intention is strong.

A good way to formalize an intention is by journalling in bed before sleep about the wish to become lucid. Meditation is also a natural way to develop intentionality and lucidity, in dreams and in waking life. If that does not work, use operant psychology - reward yourself if you become lucid! (Self-punishment, on the other hand, may not be the best idea).

Lucid Dreaming Resources

The Lucidity Institute - Stephen LaBerge's public knowledgebase.
Lucidity Letter - A compilation of the now-defunct academic journal are on Jayne Gackenbach's website.
Lucid Dream Exchange - An online magazine with many tips, resources, and personal stories.
Dream Studies Portal - My dream research portal and lucid dreaming site.

References

Bulkeley. K. (1995). Spiritual dreaming. New York: Paulist Press.

Hunt, H. (1989). The multiplicity of dreams. New Haven: Yale Press.

Hurd, Ryan Dungan (2006). Ancestral Knowledge in Lucid Dreams. Electric Dreams 13(4).

LaBerge, S. (1988). Lucid dreaming in Western literature. Gackenbach, J. and LaBerge, S., eds. Conscious mind, sleeping brain. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 11-26.

LaBerge, S. (1985). Lucid dreaming. Los Angeles, Jeremy P. Tarcher Press.

Moss, R. (1996). Conscious dreaming: a spiritual path for everyday life. New York:
Three Rivers Press.

Shafton, A. (1995). Dream reader: contemporary approaches to the understanding of
dreams. Albany: SUNY press.

Shah, I. (1964). The Sufis. New York: Anchor Books.