Tenth Anniversary Issue of Lucidity Letter

Copyright 1991 by Lucidity Association

# Letters From The Editors

#### Letter from Jayne Gackenbach, Past Lucidity Letter Editor

#### Letter from Elinor Gebremedhin, New Lucidity Letter Editor

# Part I: The Experience of Lucid Dreaming

## Introduction Harry Hunt

#### I.1 From the Beginning Through Feast or Famine Krisanne Gray

#### I.2 Lucid Dreams and Out-of-Body Experiences: A Personal Case Father “X”

#### I.3 Problems Related to Experimentation While Dreaming Lucidly George Gillespie

#### I.4 Dream Lucidity Induction and Control Alan Worsley

#### I.5 Induction of Ecstatic Lucid Dreams Daryl E. Hewitt

#### I.6 Ordinary Dreams, Lucid Dreams, and Mystical Experience George Gillespie

#### I.7 Conscious Mental Stillness in Dreams... Elinor Gebremedhin

#### I.8 Awake in the Dark: Imageless Lucid Dreaming Linda L. Magallón

#### I.9 Experimentation With The Vortex Phenomenon in Lucid Dreams Kenneth Moss

#### I.10 A Journal of Attempts to Induce and Work with Lucid Dreams: Can You Kill Yourself While Lucid? Bruce G. Marcot

#### I.11 Terminology in Lucid Dream Research Charles Tart

#### I.12 “Dreams, Illusions, Bubbles, Shadows:” Awareness of “Unreality” While Dreaming Among Chinese College Students Myrna Walters & Robert Knox Dentan

#### I.13 Conversation Between Stephen LaBerge and Paul Tholey in July of 1989 Stephen LaBerge, Paul Tholey, & Brigitte Holzinger (Ed.)

# Part II: Lucidity and Related States

## Introduction Harry Hunt

### Section A-1: Altered States - Near-Death Experiences

#### II.A-1.1 Dream Lucidity and Near-Death Experience: A Personal Report John Wren-Lewis

#### II.A-1.2 Near Death, Near Dream George Gillespie

#### II.A-1.3 CODE BLUE: A New Beginning Mark Block

### Section A-2: Altered States - Out-of-Body Experiences

#### II.A-2.1 Reflections on Lucid Dreaming and Out-of-Body Experiences Father “X”

#### II.A-2.2 Comments on OBEs and Lucid Dreams Stephen LaBerge

#### II.A-2.3 Lucid Dreams and OBEs Susan Blackmore

### Section B: Meditation

#### II.B.1 Lucid Dreams and Meditation Harry Hunt

#### II.B.2 Discussion Between Charles Tart and Lucidity Letter Editor, Jayne Gackenbach, Examining Similarities Between Dream Lucidity Witnessing and Self-Remembering Charles Tart & Jayne Gackenbach

#### II.B.3 A Conceptual and Phenomenological Analysis of Pure Consciousness During Sleep Charles Alexander

#### II.B.4 Psychological Content of “Consciousness” During Sleep in a TM Practitioner Jayne Gackenbach & William Moorecroft

#### II.B.5 A Buddhist Perspective on Lucid Dreaming Tarab Tulku XI

### Section C: Mystical and Divine Experiences

#### II.C.1 Differences Between Lucid and Nonlucid Ecstatic Dreaming Elinor Gebremedhin

#### II.C.2 Dream Light: Categories of Visual Experience During Lucid Dreaming George Gillespie

#### II.C.3 Experiencing the Divine in the Lucid Dream State Farib Bogzaran

#### II.C.4 East Meets West, Buddhism Meets Christianity: The Lucid Dream as a Path for Union Kenneth Kelzer

# Part III: Empirical Work

## Introduction Stephen LaBerge

### Section A: Induction

#### III.A.1 The Problem of Induction: A Panel Discussion Robert Price, Stephen LaBerge, Christian Bouchet, Roger Ripert & Joseph Dane

#### III.A.2 Induction of Lucid Dreams, Including the Use of the DreamLight Stephen LaBerge & Lynne Levitan

#### III.A.3 A Comparison of Waking Instruction and Posthypnotic Suggestion for Lucid Dream Induction Joseph Dane & Robert Van de Castle

### Section B: The Sleep Laboratory

#### III.B.1 Physiological Mechanisms of Lucid Dreaming Stephen LaBerge

#### III.B.2 H-Reflex in Lucid Dreams Andrew Brylowski

#### III.B.3 EEG Activity During Lucid Dreaming Robert Ogilvie, Kevin P. Vieira & Robert J. Small

#### III.B.4 Neurophysiological Order in the REM Sleep of Participants of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Program Jan M.R. Meirsman

### Section C: Predisposing Factors and Individual Differences

#### III.C.1 An Estimate of Lucid Dreaming Incidence Jayne Gackenbach

#### III.C.2 Sex Differences in Lucid Dreaming Self-Reported Frequency: A Second Look Jayne Gackenbach

#### III.C.3 Lucid Dreams and Viewpoints in Imagery: Two Studies Susan Blackmore

#### III.C.4 Manifest Content Analysis of Sleep Laboratory Collected Lucid and Nonlucid Dreams Jayne Gackenbach

#### III.C.5 Validation of Lucid Dreaming in School Age Children Deborah Armstrong-Hickey

# Part IV: Theoretical Approaches

## Introduction Jayne Gackenbach

#### IV.1 The Multiplicity of Dreams Harry Hunt

#### IV.2 Single-Mindedness and Self-Reflectiveness: Laboratory Studies Alan Moffitt, Sheila Purcell, Robert Hoffmann, Roger Wells & Ross Pigeau

#### IV.3 Dreaming: Lucid and Non David Foulkes

#### IV.4 Reply to Foulkes Stephen LaBerge

#### IV.5 From Lucid Dreaming to Pure Consciousness: A Conceptual Framework for the OBE, UFO Abduction and NDE Experiences Jayne Gackenbach

# Part V: Historical Perspectives

## Introduction Jayne Gackenbach

#### V.1 An Historical View of Dreams and the Ways to Direct Them: Practical Observations by Marie-Jean-Leon Lecoq, Le Marquis d’Hervey-Saint-Denys C.M. den Blanken & E.J.G. Meijer

#### V.2 Freud, van Eeden and Lucid Dreaming Robert Rooksby & Sybe Terwee

#### V.3 Senoi, Kilton Stewart and The Mystique of Dreams: Further Thoughts on an Allegory About an Allegory G. William Domhoff

#### V.4 The Selling of the Senoi Ann Faraday & John Wren-Lewis

#### V.5 Techniques and Antecedents: A Response to Giesler Robert Knox Dentan

#### V.6 Overview of the Development of Lucid Dream Research in Germany Paul Tholey

#### V.7 Interview with Celia Green, Author of the 1968 Classic, Lucid Dreams Celia Green & Jayne Gackenbach

#### V.8 Patricia Garfield’s Pathway to Ecstasy Re-Released: An Interview Patricia Garfield & Jayne Gackenbach

#### V.9 Keith Hearne’s Work on Lucid Dreaming Keith Hearne

#### V.10 Alan Worsley’s Work on Lucid Dreaming Alan Worsley

# Part VI: Applications

## Introduction Stephen LaBerge

### Section A: Clinical Issues

#### VI.A.1 Mental Health Applications: A Panel Discussion Patricia Garfield, Judith Malamud, Jean Campbell, Ann Sayre Wiseman & Gordon Halliday

#### VI.A.2 Some Relations Between Clinical and Transpersonal Approaches to Dreams Harry Hunt

#### VI.A.3 Training for Lucid Awareness in Dreams, Fantasy, and Waking Life Judith Malamud

#### VI.A.4 Limitations in the Utility of Lucid Dreaming and Dream Control as Techniques for Treating Nightmares Kathryn Belicki

#### VI.A.5 The Phenomenological Use of Dreams in Psychotherapy P. Erik Craig

#### VI.A.6 Letter to the Editor [The Importance of Lightheartedness] Paul Tholey

#### VI.A.7 Clinical and Transpersonal Issues With Lucid Dreaming Voiced Jayne Gackenbach

#### VI.A.8 Response to Gackenbach Stephen LaBerge

#### VI.A.9 Letter From Scott Sparrow G. Scott Sparrow

#### VI.A.10 Ethical Issues for Applications of Lucid Dreaming: An Introduction Joseph Dane

### Section B: Other Applications

#### VI.B.1 Applications of Lucid Dreaming in Sports Paul Tholey

#### VI.B.2 The Creative Process: Paintings Inspired from the Lucid Dream Fariba Bogzaran

#### VI.B.3 Healing Through Lucid Dreaming Stephen LaBerge

#### VI.B.4 A Personal Experience in Lucid Dream Healing E.W. Kellogg, III

# News and Notes

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# Letters From The Editors

##### Letter from Jayne Gackenbach, Past Lucidity Letter Editor

It is with great pleasure that I introduce this 10th year commemorative issue of Lucidity Letter. Although I did not edit it, I did edit it! This issue is made up solely of articles selected from the nine volumes for which I was Senior Editor. These were chosen by Stephen LaBerge, Harry Hunt and myself in conjunction with our new Senior Editor, Elinor Gebremedhin.
I thought I would talk about the history of Lucidity Letter and its publisher, Lucidity Association. In the fall of 1981, a few years after the completion of my dissertation on lucid dreaming, it became apparent through my correspondence that there was a small group of people who were interested in this dream experience. I had learned how very obscure a topic it was with my dissertation, even though I had the good fortune of living near and seeking the advice of one of the dreaming greats, Bob Van de Castle, and the support of the Association for Research and Enlightenment and especially Henry Reed and Scott Sparrow. Although Scott had written one of the early monographs on the topic and Celia Green had graciously given me her books on lucidity and related topics free of charge, I was to soon face the reality that there were really very few people “out there” who were interested in this topic. It wasn’t until just after my dissertation was completed in the fall of 1978 that I stumbled on an early abstract by Stephen LaBerge. Although he was to become my closest colleague during those formative years, I also wanted to somehow reach out to others who wrote to me with some interest in the topic.
So it was on a rather impromptu note that in December of 1981 I put together some excerpts from letters of colleagues, notes on my own research program, and news about other lucid dreaming activities and called this compilation, Lucidity Letter. I mailed it out to about 40 (my memory fails me!) colleagues who I thought might be interested in this work. By the second issue (March 10, 1982) I had received letters of encouragement as well as suggestions for improvement from Julian Jaynes, Judy Malamud, Scott Sparrow, Charles Tart, Robert Ogilvie, Patricia Garfield, Stanley Krippner, K. Ramakrishna Rao, and Stephen LaBerge among others. Thus this quarterly newsletter was born.
The December 1985 issue was our first bound “journal” with the special theme “Dream Lucidity and Death.” It remains one of our most popular resale issues. Starting with 1986 we went to a twice yearly, bound journal format, which we continued through 1990. Two people were especially instrumental in supporting my early efforts to publish Lucidity Letter, my colleague Stephen LaBerge and my friend Mary Tuttle. Without either of their continued and loyal support we surely would have folded.
So too my departmental chair at the University of Northern Iowa was for years behind this publication. But more changes were afoot. After a few years of supporting my journal-creating efforts, the university notified us that we needed to find a new publisher for Lucidity Letter. Although we had already begun a minimal subscription fee, the university was still carrying the bulk of the expenses. Thus Lucidity Association was created as a nonprofit organization to publish Lucidity Letter. We formed Lucidity Association in 1987 and recently received notification that we now have permanent nonprofit status from the United States Internal Revenue Service (there is a five-year trial period after application). Lucidity Association is incorporated in the state of Iowa and you may have noticed that Lucidity Letter is still printed and mailed from there.
The first proceedings of our now annual Lucid Dreaming Symposia were published in the June 1986 issue. These were from a symposium that Stephen LaBerge and I organized in the summer of 1985 at the University of Virginia preceding the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Dreams (ASD). All subsequent symposia have been organized and hosted by the Lucidity Association and held in conjunction with the annual ASD meetings. These proceedings appeared in the December issues of 1987, 1988, 1989, and 1990
Although my family and I moved to Canada in the fall of 1987, the operations of Lucidity Association and Lucidity Letter have continued very smoothly from north of the border. During our years here several other people have emerged as strong supporters of Lucidity Association/Letter. Harry Hunt has morally supported all of our work as well as sat as Chair of Lucidity Association, Consulting Editor and frequent contributor. Kathy Belicki has served as Associate Editor and occasional contributor. Fariba Bogzaran has sat on the advisory committee and been a contributor and a presenter at our annual meetings. Elinor Gebremedhin has served as Associate Editor and contributed to the last few issues. A special salute to Stephen LaBerge, who has remained a steadfast supporter, shoulder to cry on, friend to argue with, and overall cheerleader and workhorse throughout the entire 10 years of our operation
We have now diversified and with this commemorative issue we begin our new structure. Elinor Gebremedhin, as the new Senior Editor, has mounted an Herculean effort in bringing forward a huge amount of material (three times the normal issue length) and reediting it for this special issue. Fariba Bogzaran is planning the 1992 annual meeting in Santa Cruz, California. I am staying on, for a short while, as managing director handling the subscriptions, correspondence, mailing list maintenance, and brochure/advertising. We hope to transfer these duties to someone in the U.S. in the next year. I will also continue as general advisor to these wonderful women as they get used to their new volunteer duties
The final new change is with the frequency with which we can publish Lucidity Letter. Due primarily to rising production costs in the context of a recession in the United States we have had to make the difficult decision to go to an annual publication, which saves substantially on shipping costs. Starting in 1992 Lucidity Letter will come out once a year, midyear, with issue lengths of 200 to 300 pages (twice the issue length of the semiannual copies). This not only allows Lucidity Letter to continue to exist financially but will also allow more time for a more formal review process of potential articles. So the reader will get the same amount of material as they did with twice-yearly publication but in a more refined version. We have also increased the subscription cost (which has not gone up for four years) to $35 per year. We feel that with these changes we can guarantee the continued existence of Lucidity Letter as a place where many voices are heard.
Although this gives you the bare bones of our evolution toward this tenth year issue and beyond, you may still wonder what is the concept driving the content of Lucidity Letter? Well, in some sense it is still evolving. As I said above, I started it to simply connect the few people who were interested in this special dream experience. For 31/2 years this informal connecting was the major driving mechanism, but within that we saw some classic work come out on our pages such as the original Senoi articles by Dentan and Faraday (reprinted herein). When we moved to a journal form in late 1985 we had more room. That issue was made up of invited essays prompted by a moving near-death experience (NDE) of physicist John Wren-Lewis while on the Senoi trail in Malaysia with his wife Ann Faraday (reprinted herein). This lively series of essays on how the NDE is like or different from dreams, lucid dreams, and out-of-body experiences launched a new era of Lucidity Letters. No longer were we restricted to short notes on works or ideas in progress. Now we had room for more fully developed articles. By this time I had been in academia long enough (seven years) to not want Lucidity Letter to become too academic.
Although I valued the vast series of academic journals available on virtually every topic, I recognized that we were still too new to be so narrow in our focus. The reality was that for those first bound issues we would always have enough copy, but just enough. They were typically made up of a combination of first hand accounts, research papers, clinical considerations, and theoretical discussions. Although the focus was lucid dreaming, articles regularly appeared comparing them to OBEs, meditation, and nonlucid dreams. We were able to rapidly publish research results in these pages. Sometimes this went wrong, as with the sex differences premature publication which I then went back and changed (the “Second Look” is reprinted herein) and in other cases it allowed the readers to see articles on the cutting edge of the field. Early versions sometimes appeared in Lucidity Letter years ahead of their eventual appearance in more traditional academic outlet.
We came to especially appreciate the personal perspective provided to us by the many first hand reports of lucid dreaming and related experiences provided to us by our readers. These clear and precise internal observations led the field in thinking about these experiences. I should especially point to the many papers of Rev. George Gillespie which have regularly been in our pages as well as the experiences of Alan Worsley and Father “X” who have also repeatedly contributed. As Harry Hunt points out in his introduction to the “Experience of Lucid Dreaming” section, “without [these] . . . sort of detailed reports that follow we would have been left with a falsely simplified idea of what dreaming is and can be.” Lucidity Letter has always tried to maintain its appreciation of the personal experience of dreaming lucidly by consistently devoting many of its pages to these reports
The clinical possibilities of this unique sleep experience were also discussed in some length on our pages. Some of these are reprinted in this special issue but much had to be left out. As well as the fabulous potential of dream lucidity, all sides of the control–no control, ethical–not ethical, force it–don’t force it issues were considered and reconsidered
I am proud to tell you that we now have a publication where voices from as far away as Australia or China can be heard along with those from the United States, Canada and Europe. We now regularly have articles from around the world in every issue. This international flavor in both contributors and readership has been gratifying but I would especially like to shine the light on Alan Worsley in England, Paul Tholey in Germany, and Harvey Irwin in Australia as well as my Canadian colleagues (Harry Hunt, Kathy Belicki, and Alan Moffitt) and say thanks.
I would like to end this introductory letter by telling you of the two highlights of my years with this publication/organization. For me the highlight issue of Lucidity Letter was June 1989. In it were the extraordinary experiences of three ordinary individuals, the OBEs of Father “X,” the NDE of Mark Block and the UFO “abduction” of Felicia Payne’s husband and mother. While editing this I was finishing my book Control Your Dreams, and was thinking quite a bit about how these apparently diverse experiences of consciousness might fit together and with lucid dreams. We published my thoughts (reprinted herein). I tried, as has Harry Hunt in his well-received The Multiplicity of Dreams, to place lucid dreaming in its series. This placing lucidity in its series in order to better understand it has become the focus of my work since my move to Canada
Of the five Lucid Dreaming Symposia we have held over the years the highlight one for me was the meeting in Chicago in the summer of 1990. At this meeting, entitled “Higher States of Consciousness: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives,” I was able to bring my professional worlds together into one room. This was no small feat! Because I had lived in Iowa for almost 9 years I had become close colleagues with Transcendental Meditation researchers at the Maharishi International University. Although I valued their science and their personal style and wisdom I was not a regular meditator and I was always caught between two sets of two worlds. First, I have been very involved with the dreamwork movement yet my TM colleagues told me they were taught to not attend to dreams. Second, I had also become increasingly interested in Transpersonal Psychology focusing on lucidity in the context of the study of higher states of consciousness. Yet TM scientists were virtually incommunicado from the rest of the field of Transpersonal Psychology both because they were shunned and because they shunned. The questionable wisdom of my straddling these two sets of apparent contradictions was all too often brought to my attention. But all those doubts were put to rest during one magical moment at that Chicago meeting during a panel discussion on TM research by both TM and non-TM researchers some of whom had not seen nor spoken to each other in 20 years. It was one of those moments when the universe turned. It was due to the Lucidity Association’s planning committee, especially Harry Hunt, Skip Alexander and Stanley Krippner, who had the foresight to know that these groups of people needed to meet and to talk in order to further our combined efforts to understand and communicate about consciousness, be it in sleep, while awake or while somehow “altered” or “higher”.

Letter from Elinor Gebremedhin, New Lucidity Editor
You, the reader, already know that the publication you have in your hands right now is not the Lucidity Letter you’ve been used to for the last few years. This special issue commemorating the first ten years of Lucidity Letter is organized more like a full-length book than a periodical; the name has been changed from Lucidity Letter to Lucidity; the overall format of the cover design is different and there have been some changes in typesetting/page format as well. The most striking change is the change in Senior Editor, since this publication has been nurtured entirely by Jayne Gackenbach ever since she founded it ten years ago.
It’s a truism that a new manager tends to make a few obvious changes just so everyone knows there’s a new hand at the helm regardless of whether or not changes are needed. However, the “top-down” implication of this model does not accurately describe what really has happened in the production of the “book” you have in your hands. For instance, discussions of a name change have gone on for years, due to the evolution away from a newsletter orientation. Because of heavy involvement from a Steering Committee whose members meet face-to-face once a year, and otherwise must telephone from their scattered locations across the United States and Canada, the commemorative “book” you have in your hands came out of a variety of processes. The source material we had to draw on was so rich, there were many hard decisions to be made as to what should be included and what left out. It shortly became obvious that the new papers we had been readying for publication this year had to be postponed until next year. As the “book” outline grew more oriented toward certain topics and not others, we had to set aside many more fine pieces and as it was, the “book” turned out to be longer than we originally intended. There were times in which I was not certain whether I was on top, bottom or crosswise relative to this creative process, but it was fascinating how well it all worked out.
In her Letter from the Editor, Jayne has repeatedly remarked on how few people are seriously interested in this field, but to me this book nevertheless chronicles the unfolding potential of an experience that can be deeply important, to at least some people. To me, it seems quite important not to let Lucidity die. The development of new ways to teach lucidity, the new level of communication enabled by Lucidity Letter, the advent of similar publications in French and German, the existence of research projects for more than twenty years in several countries in the world, the increase in the amount of research in the last ten years and the foundations laid for the use of lucidity in creative, healing and sports applications; all these point to the possibility of something new emerging in our culture at large. Only time will tell whether lucidity will remain a subject for only a few, but books like the one you are holding in your hands may be influential in gradually changing this. When you read it, I think you’ll agree that something is really going on here.
At any rate, it’s a vision that has supplied Lucidity with an editor for a while.
Moving from visions to more practical matters, I have been writing and editing for the computer industry for more than twenty years, but this is the first time I have been responsible for setting typestyle/layout standards and overseeing the entire book through production of galleys for the printer. The first thing I have to say about this process is that it is incredibly time-consuming. I don’t know how Jayne Gackenbach managed to do all that AND write a significant number of articles herself, AND run annual conferences, AND keep track of subscriptions, AND do creative organizational moves, such as obtaining nonprofit status for Lucidity Association, AND engage in university research and teaching, AND, of course, have a family. It is significant that she has to be replaced by three people; myself for the editing of Lucidity, Fariba Bogzaran for mounting the annual conferences, and a third person, yet to be designated, for the handling of subscription fulfillment, list maintenance and related financial matters. I wonder what she is going to do next, after she catches her breath.
Lucidity Letter has been an unusual publication in that it started up at the beginning of a new chapter in consciousness studies the development of scientific methods of studying dream content that can be validated in the laboratory. Jayne Gackenbach and many of the early contributors to Lucidity Letter (such as Stephen LaBerge, George Gillespie and Harry Hunt) were quick to see implications that extended far beyond the studies themselves. The evolution of Lucidity Letter from a newsletter to a journal format, stylistic changes over the last ten years and English problems in manuscripts from non-English speaking countries meant that there was quite a bit of editing to do, more than you would think, since these articles have all been previously published. The overall aim has been to present you with a consistent style with, however, as few departures from the original texts as possible. Several articles from non-English speaking countries have been more extensively edited, and reviewed again by their authors. In some cases, an article has not been reproduced in its entirety, usually because only part of it was appropriate for the focus of the book in a given situation; these are indicated in Editor’s Notes at the beginning of the article. The original titles have been retained; in all cases, it is easy to identify the original issue from a footnote at the bottom of the first page.
I expect future issues to be much easier to produce than this one was, not only because there are working style guides, but also because of a hidden weapon: the assistance of Carol Sparks of Ralamar Sparks Enterprises. Carol offered many, many suggestions, and probably feels as if she owns this book as much as anybody. We crossed horns on at least a weekly basis on matters of punctuation and page formats in a variety of situations, while trying to improve on ten years worth of style changes, but we survived.
Although nearly all steering committee members provided input to the initial paper selection process, Jayne Gackenbach, Harry Hunt and Stephen LaBerge were especially involved in molding the shape of this book in the interim and final stages. Fariba Bogzaran and Stephen LaBerge put their heads together on the cover design. George Gillespie, in his capacity as Sanskrit scholar, deserves special thanks for his help in preparing our manuscript on Tibetan Buddhism for a much-needed second review by Tarab Tulku; it is very difficult to translate Tibetan concepts into English.

Developing Lucidity Into a Book
As we worked out what it was that we wanted to emphasize out of the wealth of material Lucidity Letter has been publishing over the last decade, we found that we could support a true book structure, rather than just assembling a miscellaneous collection of “classics.” For example, in the section on Historical Perspectives, it turned out that without ever having been deliberately planned that way, Lucidity Letter had published articles on most of the key early modern figures, beginning with the Marquis Hervey-de-Saint-Denys [another article significantly improved, and reviewed again in the Netherlands] up to and including the work of Hearne and Worsley, who were the first to design a method of laboratory validation of lucidity.
However, before dealing with the history of non-laboratory research on lucid dreaming, we decided that the best place to begin was with reports of the phenomenon itself. Although we have records of lucidity as a part of human experience for more than a thousand years, even those who experience or know about the minimalist definition of lucidity (a dream in which one knows one is dreaming while the dream is still in process), may not realize the many experiences and avenues of development open to them within this new state. Finally, it is becoming increasingly clear that lucid dreaming as a learnable skill is more accessible to the population at large than some other types of non-ordinary consciousness experiences.
For these reasons, we begin with a variety of experientially-oriented accounts from individuals from all walks of life, plus a few brief commentaries by Charles Tart and George Gillespie to put these experiences into perspective. The very first, by Krisanne Gray, tells of problems encountered by a woman who started lucid dreaming spontaneously at a very young age, and how she made use of her capabilities to solve some very practical problems as she grew older. As we move through the section, we find that spontaneous development of lucidity is not at all uncommon, but only a few of our dreamers started in childhood; one of them is Alan Worsley, the first dreamer ever to signal to a waking laboratory technician that he was dreaming, and yet remain asleep while he was doing so.
Among the dreamers who have written accounts for Lucidity Letter, it is more common for lucidity, whether unpremeditated or induced, to emerge in adulthood. At the present time in our culture, this event is likely to disturb established conceptions of waking and dreaming consciousness, as well as initiate all kinds of new experiences which may or may not be enjoyable: witness the articles by Father “X,” a Catholic monk who wonders about the demonic, as opposed to the mystical experiences of George Gillespie, a Baptist clergyman and Sanskrit scholar. Both of these men started having lucid dreams in their adult years without ever having heard of the phenomenon.
The papers that follow show how some dreamers “fall” into new states and situations, while others engage in highly organized experimentation, highlighting a phenomenon which seems “natural” or “organic” with some and learned by others. Even more indicative of the possible universality of the phenomenon is the existence of some dreams reported from mainland China. Regardless, once lucid, what the dreamer decides to experiment with in the relative freedom of the lucid dream has a great deal to do with how things turn out and there are many unexpected results. Our section on dreamers’ experiences has been deliberately designed with heavier emphasis on the ends of the bell-shaped curve (as we know it), rather than the middle.
As George Gillespie indicates early in the first section, some lucid dreamers find strong parallels and even direct relationships between their lucid dreams and other states of consciousness. The section on Related States draws connections and parallels between altered states like OBEs and NDEs, as well as meditation and mystical experience. While there are more theoretical papers and several formal studies in this section, most of the articles are still heavily focused on individual experiences.
Having established an experiential base, we next turn to a very important section, the section entitled “Empirical Work”.
Newcomers to the study of lucid dreaming may be interested to know that the modern era really took off as a result of the work of Stephen LaBerge, who independently designed and executed the same type of experiment at Stanford University, California as Hearne and Worsley did in Great Britain. Science is familiar with the phenomenon of brand new experiments that are developed concurrently, and mutually validate each other without the researchers’ knowing about each other’s work. The work in Great Britain was completed at an earlier date, but LaBerge was much more successful in expanding on and disseminating information about his findings and his methods in the context of the North American research community. The importance of laboratory studies of the type included in the “Empirical Work” section cannot be overemphasized, because these studies, of necessity restricted to intensive studies of a few individuals, also serve as checkpoints for survey work of larger numbers of people. One of the big problems with laboratory work is getting a dreamer to have lucid dreams on the night he or she is scheduled to sleep in the (expensive) sleep laboratory, hence the interest researchers everywhere have with regard to better induction methods.
Some empirical studies are in other sections of the book because of the stress we are placing on empirical validation of various phenomena. One of Jayne Gackenbach’s ground-breaking studies of a Transcendental Meditation practitioner’s dreams is in the meditation section, for instance. of course, the very nature of the history section decrees an overlap with other sections of the book. Paul Tholey’s paper on the historical development of German research discusses laboratory work and its relationship to an important theoretical base, which brings us to the next section of the book: Theoretical Approaches.
In a field so young, the impact of lucidity research on waking as well as dream consciousness theory is hardly realized yet. The placement of Harry Hunt’s paper at the head of our list is no accident, for one of the virtues of his position is its capacity for integrating a variety of theoretical threads, as well as bringing lucidity into relationship as one of several intensified dreaming experiences. In addition to Jayne Gackenbach’s state-of-the-art framework for lucidity and related states, and the other papers in the Theory section, the reader is directed to the Tibetan Buddhist paper in the Related States (meditation) section, earlier.
Last, but hardly least, we come to Applications. Although the reader will find plenty of analytical and anecdotal material here, on clinical and non-clinical types of applications, it is clear that at this point in time, the exploration of both the creative and the unsettling capacities of the lucid dreaming state is only just beginning. Hopefully, the pages of Lucidity will be able to chronicle many more new developments in the years to come.

Upcoming Issues
We have a number of interesting things planned for the 1992 issue. Among the articles scheduled are papers from the 1991 Lucidity Association Symposium, a survey of lucidity and related experiences, an interview with Tarab Tulku on the subject of dream control and conversations between Jayne Gackenbach and Norman Sattler in Germany on Sattler’s use of lucid dreaming in his clinical practice. The contributions from Tarab Tulku, a Tibetan lama, and Norman Sattler, a colleague of Paul Tholey, complement one another because both have used lucidity as a tool in clinical practice for many, many years, but the two are working out of different frameworks.
We are also pleased to offer two very different experientially oriented articles. Scott Sparrow, one of the early modern writers on lucid dreaming awareness, tells us about the beautiful, poignant, alarming, and joyous experiences he has encountered in the heights and depths of his lucid dream life. In an entirely different vein, we also hear a whimsical Alice-in-Wonderland tale from Barbara Olson, who tried to get her lucid dream characters to help her decide whether or not to go to an ASD conference in London.
More than half our readers have expressed interest in seeing more anecdotal, experientially or clinically oriented articles . . . so we call to you, our readers: tell us what you have been dreaming! Write more letters! For a start, we would like to begin tracking experiences in several areas.

•Use of lucidity in creative endeavors (arts, music, writing, etc.), technical problem solving, sports training, or mental training of any sort

•Problematical dreams, bad experiences, nightmares: their impact on waking and dreaming life, if any; differences between lucid and nonlucid types, if any, and especially how you, your friend or your client dealt with the problem.

•Differences between spontaneous and induced experiences

Last, but not least, write us and tell us what you think of our commemorative book, and what you would like to see in future issues.

# Part I: The Experience of Lucid Dreaming

## Introduction

Lucidity, 10(1 & 2), 1991

HARRY HUNT

Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada

It has been argued that what unifies the diversity of areas and methods in psychology is the overlap, constantly shifting, between “subjectively” lived experience and “objectively” measured psychophysiological processes. This formula is especially clear in dream psychology, since whatever we learn of its “process” must ultimately be related back again to these subjective reports from the night. With lucid dreaming the balance shifts even more towards personal experience. For lucid dreams have only emerged as an area of study through the insistent and repeated claims of those who have them. Without the sort of detailed reports that follow we would have been left with a falsely simplified idea of what dreaming is and can be. Whatever else lucidity may be, it is something that develops out of ordinary dreaming over many years and, as these accounts will show, in more than one way. Without gifted experients such as these we would never have realized the extent of which the dreaming process is actually a set of open potentialities.

##### I.1 From the Beginning Through Feast or Famine

Lucidity, 10(1 & 2), 1991

KRISANNE GRAY

Spokane, Washington

Note from Senior Editor, Jayne Gackenbach:
Krisanne Gray is a housewife and mother of two who runs a day care center in Spokane, Washington. Her story, as well as the work of Deborah Armstrong Hickey, is of theoretical interest to the field of lucid dreaming, not because of the process she went through in figuring out what is real (this is a familiar one to anyone who has worked on becoming lucid in sleep), but rather because she went through it at such a young age. Due to her youth, other mechanisms came into play which adults don’t normally deal with. Mrs. Gray may be a “consciousness savant” somewhat like a very young child who shows early mathematical aptitude.
Before I comment on the potential theoretical significance of this case let me say that I have spoken to Mrs. Gray at some length and believe that she is in fact honestly communicating her experiences as accurately as she can. As is often the case when I stumble upon an individual who evidences unique sleep consciousness, if they are genuine and uninformed about the area of lucid dreaming, they are amazed to discover that everyone doesn’t dream lucidly all the time. In 13 years of working on lucid dreaming I have only found four individuals (outside of long term meditators) like this. In all cases they were ignorant of lucid dreaming work, amazed that their style wasn’t the norm, and with intensive interviewing I was convinced that they fully understood what I meant and that they were honest, sincere and perhaps humbler than most. In fact, in a recent chance encounter with an Alberta businessman, who is virtually always conscious in sleep and has never meditated, he became quite uncomfortable with my interest in his sleep experiences. I hope yet to be able to convince him to come into the sleep laboratory.
Theoretically, such consciousness savants offer us a clue as to the role dreaming may play in the development of thinking. This was pointed out at the 1988 meeting of the Association for the Study of Dreams by Alan Moffitt of Carleton University. He presented a new theory of the function of dreams which dramatically goes beyond a mere “information processing” perspective. Because REM sleep is the stage of sleep in which dreams almost always occur, Moffitt argued, that “dreaming is the motor for human development.” That is, it is the part of our biological system which forces us to move form one level of intellectual capacity to the next. When we work with dreams, then, we are working with the cutting edge of our own intellectual development. Moffitt pointed to lucid REM dreams, rather that ordinary nonlucid REM dreams, as particularly clear examples of the driving mechanisms pushing us from stage to stage in our intellectual development. “Lucidity enables the further development of intentional action within the dream state,” explained Moffitt. “In effect, one can develop a new form of competence, a type of skill not available during the waking state With these considerations in mind, Lucidity Letter offers you the story of Krisanne Gray.

Remembering back as young as six or seven months of age, I was afraid to sleep—that was an, as yet, undefined state in the face of which I felt helpless with fear. Although I cannot recall even the smallest detail of those early nightmares, I do remember the fear they instilled in me.
It was in response to those nightmares that I developed the “skill” of lucid dreaming. I found rocking (first on all fours, then from side to side) soon became a means to gain the control I needed. The rhythm helped me to focus thought. Thoughts, I quickly found, had considerable power. Also, I knew that I had to control the fear I felt. This rocking motion helped me to focus on other things. I remember early nightmares were more on a feeling level than a visual one.
At age two I remember the nightmares becoming more visual. I tried to find a way to tell if this state was “real” or not, if this was a dream because I was experiencing feelings of hurt and pain. I remember being very angry when people would say, “Oh, it’s just a dream, it won’t hurt you!” I became more aware that my feelings had a strong influence on my nightmares but not as much of an impact while awake.
I continued to try to define reality. I found that it helped to have a set sleep schedule as it told me that this was either awake time or nightmare time. By the age of four, I felt it was very important to tell myself when I knew I was in a dream. Knowing I had to define “real” more clearly, I found that dreams had no rules and no boundaries while reality had many. Thus I began to define reality more by its limitations. So in order to find out what real was, I had to discover what it was not!
At about five years of age, I developed my first “control”—a term I gave to the cue giving me conscious awareness in a subconscious state. The mechanics were simple. I would define the state I was in. At this point I would use the control of the state to stop an obvious nightmare. Then I shook my head, hard and fast, and I would awaken immediately.
These control methods developed as the ways of testing the state developed. If I could leap tall buildings in a single bound, I was dreaming. Dreams seemed to be easier to define, and my control seemed to work every time. Or did it?
At about age of eight or nine, I had my most challenging nightmares. It seemed that my mind was intent on this lesson of wits. As I learned about various states of mind through my mind’s deceptions, I grew in my control of my conscious and subconscious thoughts.
The following nightmare is a composite of memories that typify my dreams of that period:
I wake up. It’s morning. I can hear my mom calling me from downstairs. I stretch and yawn. I sit up in bed and look outside—a beautiful day, blue skies, and lots of birds singing. I slip my legs over the side of the bed and feel the cold, hardwood floor under my feet. Suddenly, a clawed hand grasps one foot and the other. I fall to my knees on the floor, screaming in terror! I realize this can’t be real! I quickly use my control action and wake instantly in my bed. Still shaking, I slowly peer under my bed. Nothing is there, and I sigh with relief. I hear mom again calling me for school. She knocks on my door and tells me I’m going to be late. I quickly jump out of bed and dress. I run downstairs to find my sister munching down breakfast, and I join her. As I’m pouring my cereal, I see my sister laughing. Her bowl is filled with live snails! She’s crunching down another spoonful. I realize she wouldn’t do this (not live ones anyway!) and know I’m dreaming. I shake my head, longer this time, to awaken. Again, I hear mom calling. Once again I check under the bed. I try to go through a wall but hit it instead. This must be real! Again I dress and run downstairs. I check the cereal situation out carefully. Everything seems normal, so off to school my sister and I go loaded down with books. School seems to reassure me. I couldn’t dream this long! Classes end, and I race home. I am immediately stopped by a locked door. My sister runs past me with her girl friend and lets me know they’ll be at her friend’s house. I pound on the front door, thinking my mom is asleep. The door flies open to reveal the face of an old woman. I ask as I push past her who she is. By now I know something is very wrong. Nothing inside is the same. The TV is gone. There is a big clock in the corner that wasn’t there before. I ask where my mother is. The old woman replies this is her house and has been for the last ten years. I run out of the house and turn to look at it. I realize this is not real, it’s a nightmare! I shake my head, and, again, awaken to my mom calling me.
This time I knew I was awake. You can see why I spent a great deal of time developing this nightmare control. Once I realized that I was the one who wrote, acted, and reacted within this realm, I was able to control the outcome. I soon changed nightmares and then learned to rewrite them.

Feast or Famine

As an adult I have been able to channel this ability to deal with personal concerns. At one time I was faced with a serious dilemma—how to lose 25 unwanted pounds on a 5’2” frame, pounds which had been gained when I quit smoking. After careful analysis, I decided my regimen would include a new diet, a new craft to occupy me by day and lucid dreaming at night.
Knowing that my main enemy was those unwanted, however-much-enjoyed calories, made the answer clear. I had to satisfy my appetite while eliminating the unpleasant side effects: calories, convenience, cost. I knew only one place where this and more was easily obtainable—a place where I could eat an unlimited variety of foods, under any conditions, within any surroundings I chose. This place, found only within my imagination, has only the boundaries I impose. This clearly has its advantages. My theory was based on the idea that if I could satisfy my mind’s appetite, then perhaps my body, too, would be content. So I set up trial dreams.
I can no longer remember most of these specific dreams; however, the technique was always the same. First, I make plain my intention both outwardly and inwardly. I then begin to “program” the night’s dreams. A few times during the evening I imagine a favorite restaurant, a favorite food. I try to focus on only one place or food. Then, just before I fall asleep, I again focus my energy on that idea. I detail my imaginary description, including smell, taste, and texture.
Once the technique of reaching a lucid dream state had been mastered, dream control enabled me to choose a few dinner guests to join me or included the choice of the finest clothes. Then I fell asleep:
I find myself sitting at a huge crudely built wooden table. I am rubbing elbows with a huge hulk of a man to my left, to my right a dainty wisp of a girl dressed like a fairy princess. I step outside myself for a moment and find I am dressed in a beautiful gown of soft ice-blue, covered in lace. I am very pleased to find myself so well-heeled. I am completely aware that I am dreaming. This gives me a wonderful feeling of complete control. This alone has a positive effect on my mood both asleep and awake. I look around at the faces of the medieval royalty dining with unrestrained enthusiasm upon what appears to be roast pork and roast turkey. The smells fill my nose with flavors. Formal eating habits aside, I, too, reach across the table to tear a drumstick savagely from what is left of the turkey. So, with all the flavor and texture of food eaten while awake, I indulge myself for what seems like hours. I remember being distracted by the eating habits of my dinner partners. Conversation seemed limited to lip-smacking and contented groans of satisfaction. I felt right at home, as I run a day care facility. I was even beginning to feel too full!
When I awakened, it took me a few minutes to realize I wouldn’t need that bicarbonate after all. I felt very full. In fact, for several hours after my night’s feasting, I felt very content. Also I discovered an additional aid in looking forward to the next night’s meal. I could put off that tempting treat until I could afford the calories, expense, and time.
Understand, however, that it takes many years of practice to reach this lucid dream state on demand. Even though I have practiced for years, I can’t always reach a specific dream place every time. I find that my odds of “waking up” where I want to in a dream are about one in three. However, almost every night I can enter a dream and turn it into a lucid one. So I could change my dream to accomplish the goal.
There is a difficulty in this, however. Dreaming a particular thought is not as difficult as keeping in focus my intended goal. It seems the problems and concerns of waking life have importance while dreaming. There are subtle differences in values and not all concern moral beliefs (to my knowledge). Teaching yourself to focus is the most effective way to gain control. With that control an entire world becomes yours for the taking and helps you to achieve daytime goals as well. This works, and has worked, many times for me. As of now, my “diet” dreams still help me to maintain the weight I chose, just as it helped me lose those unwanted pounds many years ago.
Sleep is a very welcome time of day for me. I can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone I choose. I enjoy lucid dreams almost every night, and still find myself amazed at the possibilities available to.

##### I.2 Lucid Dreams and Out-of-Body Experiences: A Personal Case

Lucidity, 10(1 & 2), 1991

FATHER “X” A Catholic Monk

I have just finished LaBerge’s book, Lucid Dreaming, and was gratified to learn that the lucid dreams of not a few people have similar characteristics to my own. These include:

1. Testing of gravity to reassure oneself that one is really awake in a dream;

2. Varying degrees of lucidity, some so lucid that one fears one will become “stuck”;

3. Frequent inability to read any written or printed matter;

4. Need to remain emotionally detached from the dream to prolong it;

5. Experience of lucidity coming over one gradually or suddenly; and

6. Capacity for voluntary action in this dreamworld.

My lucid dreams are tied up with another phenomenon, that of the out-of-body experience The essential difference between [OBE] experiences and my lucid dreams is that I am totally conscious when I enter this other state of consciousness whereas my lucid dreams always begin with a nonlucid dream which then becomes lucid.
How could someone who is totally conscious enter the dream state? All I know is that when the paralysis and vibrations come over me my vision [blurs] but I am still aware of my surroundings. Then I am literally pulled out of my body and off I go.
LaBerge seems to suggest in chapter nine [that] the dreamworld possesses some sort of objective existence. Tholey also suggested that the dreamworld seemed to possess an “inertia” and “lawfulness” all its own. As for myself, after having undergone hundreds of these experiences over a period of twelve years, the only reasonable conclusion I can come to is that the content of most of my experiences come from some source other than my subconscious [One] characteristic of my experiences which convinces me that this dreamworld has some sort of objective existence is that I have never been able to transform the content of my experiences with my conscious mind. The individuals and environment in this world sometimes change dramatically but the changes do not appear to come from my mind.
I was particularly interested in LaBerge’s description of the experience of the Indian physician and editor, Ram Narayana, as he tried to convince the creatures of his dreamworld that they were his own creation. I too have succumbed to that temptation I usually ended up with a fight on my hands One of these experiences . . . started out as a nonlucid dream which quickly became very lucid.
I found myself walking down a very busy, bustling city street in what looked like a large metropolitan city at noon. As usual, with so many of my experiences, at first glance everything looked normal. All sorts of people walking to and fro, seemingly concerned only with their own personal affairs. The clothes and hairstyles and everything else about them looked more or less modern and normal. There was a lot of traffic in the streets and even a policeman directing it.
Well, for some reason I was feeling very frustrated and angry so I decided to “let it all hang out.” I walked out to the middle of the street and started shouting as loud as I could, “All right you people, listen up! This is my dream and I want to know what in the hell is going on around here!”
Well, if I had dropped a bomb I probably could not have gotten their attention any quicker—all at once everything stopped and I mean everything. Everyone stopped dead in their tracks, turned and stared at me. Then they all began moving towards me in a very threatening way; I really thought that I had done it this time as I could feel the panic and fear sweeping over me. Frantically I began concentrating on my body lying in my bed. Finally, just before they reached me, I found myself back in my bed.
Finally, I’d like to relate an experience I had earlier this year, which is a good example of the puzzling nature of many of my experiences. It began as a normal dream and quickly turned into a very lucid dream:
I found myself in an urban setting, standing on a city block, observing all sorts of people bustling about I saw that I was standing in front of a small building which looked like it might be a library or a museum. I decided to try my luck in there, so I walked up to the door, opened it, and entered. I had fairly good control of my body and my vision was very clear. I am always amazed at my sense of touch in these experiences. I can actually feel the objects I am touching. However, It is not a direct sense of touch—rather it feels like I am wearing heavy gloves on my hands.
It seemed to be a library as there were rows of books stacked in shelves along the walls. I immediately noticed two middle-aged men sitting on the floor with their backs leaning up against the bookshelves. They did not seem to be reading anything, just staring off into space. There were only about five or six people in the place, and they were all clustered around a desk in the middle of the room where a pretty, blond-haired girl in her early twenties seemed to be checking out books. Since so many of my experiences are very short, some lasting only seconds, I thought that if I was going to get any useful information from this experience, I better start right away before the experience ended. I walked up to her desk, stood directly in front of her, and just blurted out the first thing that came to my mind: “Are you people dead?”
The girl behind the desk looked at me in a sort of wistful way and said, “Yes,” and without my saying anything else she added this extraordinary statement, “but I am the only one around here who remembers dying.”
Before I could ask her anything else, the other people around the desk began pushing me back and started to act in a very threatening way towards me. Next thing I knew the experience ended and I was back in my bed.

##### I.3 Problems Related to Experimentation While Dreaming Lucidly

###### GEORGE GILLESPIE

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Lucid dreaming offers a unique opportunity for the study of dreams. The lucid dreamer knows that what is being experienced is a dream, and thus, while dreaming, can investigate dream content and how consciousness works during dreams as well as do exploratory experiments.
For some years I have experimented while dreaming lucidly. While awake, I plan an experiment plus a cue word or phrase that expresses the experiment. For example, in a series of experiments, I had planned to handle an object and note its solidity, then put my hand through that object, and finally to feel it again as solid. I found that once I knew I was dreaming, if I could bring to mind the cue “solidity” or “test solidity,” I generally had no problem remembering what to do.
While experimenting in dreams, however, I met with certain problems that arise out of the nature of dreaming. I’ll begin with the more obvious ones.

No notetaking

There is the problem of not being able to take notes. Actually I can, but they disappear when I wake up.

Interruption

There is both the problem of waking up before finishing an experiment and the fear of waking up that occasionally makes me rush through an experiment. False awakenings (dreaming that I have awakened) and what I think of as the “spliced-film effect,” in which suddenly I am dreaming something else, have the same effect as waking up, since I no longer know I am dreaming.

Undesirable circumstances

The dreamer cannot select the circumstances in which he or she will experiment. Experiments must be carried out in whatever dream environment is found when the dreamer becomes lucid. For instance, I had planned to do ten jumps in a dream, but when I became lucid, I found myself poised inside a tower with little to stand on. I was afraid of falling and could not proceed with my jumps.

Intrusions

The dreamer cannot prevent intrusions into the experiment. Things appear or disappear.
Events happen without warning. If a beast takes my hand, I have to deal with him. In one case, I was testing the continuity of consciousness by counting in the dream, intending to count through the act of waking up and slightly beyond. I was counting out loud at a regular speed, deliberating on each number. Someone began pinching me in my seat. This distracted me. I tried to shake him off and couldn’t, so I ignored him. Next, I had bothersome grape seeds in my mouth. I needed to spit them out, yet had to be careful not to lose count nor lose my rhythm.

The “reality” of the dream

In spite of knowing I am dreaming, the dream may be so convincing that it disturbs my progress. Once when someone wanted to take a picture of me with my Uncle Tom, I thought it was not right to interrupt the picture-taking to proceed with the experiment.

The attraction of the dream

Even when the dream has been unpleasant, or upon waking reflection I see nothing that could have interested me, the dream attracts me so greatly that it takes a certain amount of will power to proceed with my experiment. Often I ignore experimenting in order to try to go on with the dream.

The presence of only what is being experienced

There is to the dream only what is being experienced.
What has just been seen is gone and cannot be seen again. There is nothing out of view, behind me or to the sides. Nevertheless, it seems that there is physical continuity from what was experienced earlier, and it seems the environment extends out of sight. Therefore, I may make wrong assumptions about my experience. When I saw only light, I assumed without warrant that I was surrounded by light. When I was trying to carry out a pre-planned dream, for which I needed a plant, I turned and saw a potted plant. I wrongly assumed that it had already been there. But it did not exist until I saw it.

The occurrence of what is anticipated

What is anticipated tends to occur, directly or indirectly.
Anticipations include desire, intention, fear, the observation of a possibility and expectation of certain responses. If I plan to go upstairs, stairs appear. If I expect to land when I fall, I do (or wake up); if I don’t expect to, I keep falling. If I want to look out of the window, I next find myself outside the window. This effect has serious implications for experiments, for we are likely to see happen what we expect to happen. When I test for solidity, things feel normal when I first feel them, but when I intend my hand to go through them, it does, feeling their texture. How-ever, what is anticipated may be slightly altered, or may not occur. For instance, a salesman that I hoped to take part in a dream turned out to be a saleswoman.

Deactivation of the dream environment

To maintain the dream environment I must interact with it. If I stop to compose poetry or to try to remember where I am sleeping, the activity in the dream environment diminishes or stops. If my mind is taken off the environment altogether, the environment is in danger of being lost, causing me to wake up. For example, when I was trying to mentally picture my grandmother’s house while I kept my eyes open, as I can do while awake, I needed to keep running down the dream road to keep my interaction with the dream and not wake up.

Limitations of memory

While dreaming, I remember few circumstances of my waking life. What I remember is largely the previous events of the dream, plus a few stray memories. I can bring little to mind, though there is no problem with rote memory. There is no awareness of a continuity of events leading to the present place and moment. Indeed, memories are often false. In the first 277 lucid dreams for which I had planned experiments, in only 122 of them (44%) was I able to bring to mind in whole or in part the experiment that I had planned to do. Sometimes I mistakenly proceeded upon a former experiment. During an experiment I also might forget what I am to be doing or what I am looking for. If I do not wake up soon, I may forget some of what happened. When I was composing poetry, I kept the compositions to only two lines, and even then I often could not retain parts of the lines.

Knowledge not based on sense experience

Much of my understanding of the dream is not determined by sense experience. My recognition of places, people and objects does not depend on what I see. I spontaneously assume I am in Hong Kong without any clues in the environment and without any memory of having arrived there. I “recognize” Charlotte, my wife, without looking at her. I can “know” what she said without hearing it said. I can “know” what is happening out of sight. False memories come in the same manner. Such spontaneous, unconsciously-supplied knowledge frequently accompanies dream experiments. For one experiment, I wanted to change whatever dream environment I found myself in to New Market in Calcutta. I eventually realized that the identity of where I was did not depend on what I saw, but on what I “knew” it to be. The necessary change in the dream could not be in an indeterminate visual environment, but in what place I believed it to be. In one lucid dream, I “knew” that I was flying about in my real bedroom, in spite of the fact that there was nothing truly recognizable in the room.

Limitations in rationality and judgment

While dreaming, I have no such thing as a scientific attitude, nor even much rationality. I can make no critical judgment about the progress or outcome of my experiments. I am not aware of inconsistencies, changes or implications. The judgments that I do make are more frequently spontaneous knowledge, not based on my perception of the experiment. When I try an experiment not already planned ahead while awake, I often do such irrational “experiments” as trying to make Psalm 140 appear or examining the car my mother just left in, so that I can compare it when I wake up with the one she “really” left in. In another dream in which I wanted to examine objects for authentic duplications of waking reality, I was absurdly trying to decide whether a painting was authentically by Goya.

Unpremeditated action and speech

While dreaming I often speak and act spontaneously. These unpremeditated actions, rather than arising out of what I am doing, intrude into the dream. For example, I had planned to repeat the Lord’s Prayer in a dream. When I remembered to do so, I spontaneously proceeded to sing it to a familiar tune. I eventually realized that that was taking too long, and that I should continue by only repeating it. In other experiments, I attempted to put objects I saw in the dream into alphabetical order. I consistently had the problem that while I repeated the words for what I had seen, trying to remember them, I spontaneously changed some words and added others, usually alliterative by-products of the original words. For instance, in one dream, I saw stairs, a pipe, some paper, and a wheel. But when I made the list and repeated it, I ended up with “air, pipe, paper, steel, wheel.” Stairs had been dropped. Air and steel had been added.

Relatedness of words to the dream

Words brought to mind tend to be related to the ongoing dream. I found that each time I composed a couple of lines of poetry in a dream, by letting them come to mind, the lines had a relationship to what I had been dreaming. When I tried to remember a forgotten address by simply speaking it, part of the incorrect address that I said was related to my dream location. In a series of dreams I tried to recall where I was sleeping, but when I looked back on the series of tests, I saw that each time, my guess was related to my dream situation. Each time but once my guess was incorrect. The time I was correct I guessed that I was in Landour, but I had been walking along the type of street I would find only while staying in Landour. It only seemed that I had guessed correctly.

The experimenter as part of the experiment

If I test my memory or thinking, obviously I test myself. But also if I test the dream environment, whatever I experience of myself physically is a part of the environment I am testing. All aspects of what I experience remain dependent on my creation of them. I can never separate myself from anything I investigate. When I intend to be still and watch a dream impartially, I can never feel separated from it. For example, in a solidity experiment, I placed my hand inside my uncle to see the effect it would have if I kept it in him. My arm looked normal up to the point where it entered him. It seemed I was successfully keeping my hand inside him. However, upon waking reflection, I realized that I had not observed my hand staying inside him. I did not recall feeling my hand inside him or feeling his texture or moving my hand inside. I had only seen my arm stop at my uncle’s body.
In spite of the problems, dream experimentation and observation is possible. I remember planned experiments occasionally. When I remember them, I can carry them out. More often than not I remember the dream well upon awaking. And (what can be seen over and over again in the examples I gave) once awake, I can reflect critically on the dream, the experiment, the results and myself as the dreamer. I can compare with earlier experiences and see inconsistencies, changes, implications, false memories, false assumptions, and bad judgments. So it is possible for me to carry out experiments in lucid dream sand learn from them.

##### I.4 Dream Lucidity Induction And Control

###### ALAN WORSLEY

St. Thomas Hospital, London, Great Britain

Editor’s Note: Alan Worsley was the first dreamer to use specific Rapid Eye Movement (REM) signals in a sleep laboratory to indicate that he knew he had started a lucid dream. These excerpts from a somewhat longer essay tell us about his child-hood development efforts, specific personal experiments, and some conclusions from his experience as an “oneironaut” in lucid dream research laboratories.
My most important qualification for presenting this paper is an extensive direct experience of lucid dreams. I have had hundreds of lucid dreams in which I have done an experiment or made some observation. In sleep-laboratory work I have had 50 signal-verified lucid dreams. A primary concern of mine is with the philosophy and phenomenology of dreaming and altered states of consciousness and with what they can tell us abut normal consciousness.

Lucid Dreaming Personal History: Development Of Elementary Techniques

As far as I remember, I achieved my first lucid dream by a deliberately developed technique, at about age five. I had discovered I could wake myself from frightening dreams by shouting, “Mother!” Knowing I had this escape route I became more daring; I deliberately allowed a dream of falling to continue, and nothing bad happened. I became even more confident and, having a lucid dream every few months, I gradually learned to recognize that I was dreaming even when the dream was not frightening and I did not have to remember it was only a dream. I also learned that I could wake if I wanted to. I became fascinated by the idea of being free in my own world. As I grew older I began to call these dreams “conscious” dreams.
At about age 12, I planned my first “conscious dream” experiment. It was to investigate how much detail it is possible to see in a dream. In the first lucid dream I had after planning the experiment I remembered to do it. I was standing in a doorway, the frame of which was made of wood. I decided to look for the grain in the wood. I discovered I could see the fine details of the grain and concluded that visual acuity was good in dreams. I have since realized that detail in dreams is not so much perceived as created. My conclusion should have been that it is possible for fine detail to be created in dreams.
Every few weeks or months I would have one of these exciting adventures. Recently I have performed more sophisticated experiments. One series of experiments explored the properties of television sets in my dreams. I started with simple tasks such as turning a TV set on and off, increasing the sound, changing channels, or adding color. Then I decided it would be interesting if, having selected a particular scene, I could move into it. I managed to do this by expanding the screen until the edges were no longer visible and then walking into the scene

Suspension Of Disbelief

When one is awake and looking at the physical world, there is no problem in believing it to be real. The problem comes when an apparently physically real world appears in a dream and one wishes to realize that it is not physically real or, having deliberately altered it, knowing it is only a dream, to reestablish the convincing reality of it. In controlling lucid dreams one is trying to do two things at once which seem at odds with each other; to induce imagery and to pretend that one is not responsible for the imagery. The images so created in lucid dreams seem to come with reality built-in.
In lucid dreams, I try to balance the degree of awareness (needed for informed control) that it is “only a dream” with the autonomy and spontaneous unpredictable creativity of dreams. These latter characteristics contribute to the feeling that the reality is authentic. This balancing can be difficult to do when I carry out actions within the dream scene with the full knowledge that I am dreaming and have chosen the whole scene deliberately. I have to suspend disbelief, as when watching a play. It is easy to experience a well-produced play or a film as “real” even though, at any time, one may step back to remind oneself that it is “only a play.”

What Causes Dreams?

My impression is that nearly all dreams begin with involuntary imagery after which, if the dream is to continue, it requires attention, and better still, active participation. Dream imagery, unlike a film, cannot continue to run independently of the brain. In nonlucid dreams the attention and the participation are “involuntary” as I am taken in by the imagery and I do what it seems to demand. In lucid dreaming I can choose to attend to the dream or to some other mental activity such as imagining, calculating, or remembering a dream experiment. In my experience, if attention is focussed on these other activities for more than a few seconds the dream may fade. I may be able to recover the dream state by recalling or imagining the last dream scene or starting a new one, but if the process to which I have been attending is more similar to waking thought than to dreaming I may even wake up. If I lose the dream but do not wake, even though I am still lucid, I tend to become disoriented, perhaps because there is no stable focus or content to be lucid about. In order to carry out an experiment requiring waking-type thought in a lucid dream without losing the dream imagery I sometimes switch attention every two or three seconds between attending to the dream imagery and then to ensuring its maintenance. This seems to allow refreshment of the dream imagery during prolonged non-dream tasks such as communicating with the outside world

REM Control by Avoiding Eye Movement

As I have grown increasingly sophisticated in managing dream imagery, I have developed the ability to choose whether to regard the imagery as moving in relation to me or myself as moving in relation to it. In the sleep laboratory, not only can I move my eyes at will, as when signalling, but I can keep them still when otherwise they might be moving, as between signals. That I am able to keep them still when required helps to make the signals clear. By this means it may be possible to reduce markedly the very characteristic which gives REM sleep its name, thereby making “phasic” REM less distinguishable from “tonic” REM.
Some eye movements associated with scanning a dream scene can be avoided by very simple techniques. In order to look at a different part of a dream scene, I may be able to move it into view instead of moving the direction of my gaze. For instance, if I wish to look at my hand in a dream and my hand is not already in view, I can fix my gaze on the part of the dream scene at which I am already looking and bring my dream hand into line with it. This is an easy alternative. If the whole scene is a large picture which I am holding in my hand, to look at a different part of the scene I can move the picture instead of moving my eyes, though to forestall the possibility of my eyes making a reflex tracking movement I have to move the picture very quickly. Another way to not move my eyes while dreaming is to stare at a stationary object. If I moved my eyes I would see a different part of the dream scene.
I can scan a dream scene while keeping my eyes still by using a dream mirror. Though a dreamed mirror appears in the dream to be a real object, it is only a virtual or dreamed device. If I look straight into the mirror, not changing the direction of my gaze, I can look at different parts of the dream scene by moving only the mirror.
By using these techniques I alter my expectations. I still expect to see different parts of the dream scene, but I do not expect to have to move my eyes to do so. It would be interesting to discover just how much the REMs of phasic REM can be reduced by these techniques.

Delay In Dream Imagery Generation

In some of my experiments I have investigated the delay which occurs between the moment of willing or expecting a change to occur in dream imagery and the moment of its actually beginning to change. The so-called “light switch phenomenon” is perhaps the most familiar illustration of this delay. I have observed many times, as others have, that when it is dark in dreams and I try to switch on a light, the light will not come on, or at least not come on immediately or brightly. The same applies to attempts I have made to lengthen my arm, sink into the ground or to make things appear out of nothing.
In waking life making your arm longer is impossible. Therefore, when I tried it in a lucid dream I had no experience of how it should be done. I tried to stretch it further than I knew it would stretch when awake. After a delay of one or two seconds, my arm started to grow longer and my right hand soon disappeared into the distance. Then I realized I had not been as successful as I had first thought; I could feel another arm at my side. In order to achieve correspondence of visual with tactile and kinesthetic imagery I repeated the arm lengthening procedure while sliding my hand along a rough wall and watching it closely. In this way I generated tactile sensations in my hand while it moved away from me, and thereby I successfully integrated all relevant imagery modes. I am now able to retrieve distant objects using this arm lengthening technique

Implications of Transferring Lucidity Techniques To Nonlucid Dreams

I have noticed a tendency for techniques first developed in my lucid dreams to become incorporated into my repertoire of dream experiences generally. For instance I first used the arm-lengthening technique in a lucid dream. Later, in what appeared to be a nonlucid dream, I used the arm-lengthening technique as if I knew it would work, even though the presumption in nonlucid dreams is that one is in the real world where miracles are impossible. Does this mean that though I was not “aware” that I was dreaming, I somehow nevertheless knew that contrary to waking experience I would be able to lengthen my arm? It appears that my nonlucid dreaming self has the ability to exploit techniques that my lucid dreaming self has developed. If “I” have a wonderful time in nonlucid dreams by using techniques developed in lucid dreams, but the lucid “I,” the lucid person who would clearly recognize the experience as a dream, am not there, from the point of view of the waking self whose wonderful time was it?
I have come to realize through consideration of my own dream observations that, like other skills—such as driving a car or playing the piano—which are practiced diligently with great effort and concentration, “dreaming” is a learnable skill.
Having learned by many hours of practice to operate reasonably well in a lucid dream I have found that techniques which once required deliberation have become second nature. This includes to some extent the need to remind myself that I am dreaming. Habitual familiarity with the implications of the fact that I am dreaming now enables me to act quickly and incisively whereas before I would dither and get involved in useless side issues. For instance I remember once many years ago trying to go to a different scene in a lucid dream by hitching a lift. Now I can change the scene by simply closing my eyes and imagining the next scene.
In a sense the lucidity, once it has started, has become, paradoxically, more automatic. In lucid dreams I now engage in “dangerous” activities such as flying, hitting walls and passing through them without stopping, knowing I am perfectly safe. I know very well what I am doing without having to think about it.
If one learns to dream so well, so fluently, that one becomes as a fish in water, in control but not having to think about it, is that still lucid dreaming?
In fact, I have begun to think that many people who would not call themselves lucid dreamers have in fact learned to “dream well.” They may fly or perform other miraculous feats in their dreams, somehow recognizing that it is safe to do so, though they may never have articulated this recognition. They may in effect be leading secret lives, of which their waking selves are hardly aware if, like most people, they forget their dreams.

##### I.5 Induction of Ecstatic Lucid Dreams

###### DARYL E. HEWITT

San Franscisco, California

In recent years there has been a growing interest in lucid dreams of a “transcendent” or “mystical” nature, with corresponding efforts to develop language for their description (LaBerge, 1985; Tart, 1984). Without attempting to solve the terminology problem, as my main focus is on experience, I would like describe some of my lucid dreams, which I will simply refer to as “ecstatic”—in the sense of joyous intensification of consciousness being their main feature—and discuss elements which I have found relevant to their induction. I will begin with an example:
May, 1986. I suddenly become lucid in the dream as I am walking in the hallway of my high school. I am very glad to be lucid, and to be virtually as aware as in waking life. As usual, I want to get outside, into the light. Walking down the hallway I come to the exit, but my attempt to open the door is thwarted by the hulk of a wrecked truck. Realizing it is only a dream, I manage to get through the door enough to grasp the vehicle with both hands and heave it up and to the side almost without effort.
Outside, the air is clean, the sky blue, the scene pastoral and brilliantly green. I run through the grass and leap into the air joyously. Soaring through the treetops, I become entangled in branches, and have to hover while extricating myself. Finally above the limbs, I continue my flight to a few hundred feet high. While flying, I think, ‘I’ve flown so many times before, maybe I’ll try a floating meditation in the sky.’ Having decided on the attempt, I ask for help from the “Higher,” saying aloud, “Highest Father-Mother, help me to get the most out of this experience!” I then roll over backwards and cease attempting to control my flight, without fear of falling.
Immediately I begin to float through the sky, upside down with eyes closed, the sun beaming brilliantly down upon me, filling my head with light. I feel like a feather floating lazily through the air. During about five minutes of floating, I gently but firmly push thoughts that arise out of my mind, as in my waking meditation practice. The less distracted I am by thoughts, the more intensely aware and genuinely joyous the experience becomes—what I can only describe as ecstasy. Gradually I become aware of my body in bed, and as I awaken there is a feeling of lightness and well-being which is hard to describe.
I have had lucid dreams for eighteen years, but only learned to induce them at will through my training in the MILD induction technique and association as an oneironaut with Stephen LaBerge’s research. In the five years since then, in my lucid adventures I have done a great deal of exploring, signalling in the laboratory by way of eye movements, carrying out experiments, and especially flying. Having learned to make lucid dreams last for up to an hour, there was plenty of time for these activities. Among other things, I learned to fly very fast and very high, to pass through walls, including steel (and to burn holes through them with lasers from my fingertips!), to study the lucid dream environment in exquisite close-up detail, explore other planets, and especially to alter the dream environment at will, as in making things appear, disappear, and change shape and color.
After five years of memorable experiences I began to be concerned, because much as I love lucid dreams, I was running out of things to do! I might go on for perhaps half an hour, exploring, flying and altering the environment. However, although a lucid dream is always very meaningful for me, I began to long for the greater depth I had long believed possible in a lucid dream. I was becoming a little jaded.
In 1985 I began experimenting with meditation in lucid dreams in an effort to discover this depth. These experiments brought profound results. On a half dozen occasions I succeeded in remembering my intention to sit down in the dynamic atmosphere of the lucid dream, and managed to be undistracted by dream imagery long enough to practice deep, rhythmic breathing. In each case awareness seemed to expand into an egg-shaped sphere which encompassed my dream body, with a corresponding dramatic intensification of consciousness. As this happened, colors flowed like pools of neon light in my inner vision, as they sometimes do in meditation and before falling asleep. The state intensified until the dream imagery, through half shut eyes, took on a diaphanous character and finally disappeared. I became a point of consciousness contentedly floating in an intense yellow-orange field of light.
Unfortunately, the state would last for at most a minute, and I would wake up. This may have had to do with the lack of dream imagery to maintain the brain’s model of the dream world. I intend to continue my efforts to meditate in lucid dreams, as others have, but I have since learned another method for achieving a state of very intense consciousness, as distinguished from my “usual” range of lucid awareness.

The previously described lucid dream of floating in sunlight illustrates this method as follows:

1. A preliminary overcoming of obstacles; followed by

2. Intentionally refraining from manipulation of outward dream content;

3. Appeal to the “Higher”;

4. Control of thoughts; and

5. Trusting myself to the flow of the lucid dream without fear.

Before I can hope to have an ecstatic lucid dream, I need to maintain lucidity long enough to attain stability and clarity sufficient to remember and carry out my intentions. In my experience, for a dream to become really exquisitely lucid requires about five minutes. A number of mishaps can occur to thwart me in this period—an unrecognized false awakening, a fearful or startling event which causes me to awaken, or losing the lucidity and falling back into dream. Recognition of false awakenings depends largely on sufficient daytime practice of reality checks associated with the MILD technique. My method of remaining lucid is to try to move as slowly and deliberately as possible, then to repeat aloud, “This is a dream,” and avoid interac-tions with dream characters for as long as necessary to achieve stable lucidity. Further, almost invariably I encounter obstacles in my lucid dream. Obstacles have included being entangled in branches, finding myself lucid under water or in-side steel girder cages or rooms with no doors or windows, being held under restraint by dream entities, and so forth. Overcoming such obstacles and the fear which ac-companies them requires deliberate thought, focus of intention and execution of certain acts, such as passing through walls. In the process of overcoming fear and obstacles, my lucidity is intensified, resulting in a greater sense of awe.
Once these obstacles are overcome, I then appeal to the “Higher,” followed by an intentional relinquishing of control of dream content. My attempts at making such an appeal were on LaBerge’s suggestion (1985). The importance, I feel, of appeal-ing to my conception of a higher being or a “higher self” for guidance to get the most out of the experience lies in recognizing the limitations of the dreaming self, which after all is only one aspect of the total self. Otherwise the dream self, a reflection of the waking personality, is wont to impose its limited perspective/desires on the lucid dream: flying, exploration, sex, meeting famous people, etc. The relinquishing of control of dream content frees my brain (or unconscious mind, if you will) to devise a broader, different and more inspiring scenario. This paradoxical process of deliberate effort to relinquish control seems necessary because otherwise the brain’s productions tend to be more along the random, chaotic lines of nonlucid dreaming. Once I entrust myself to whatever unfolding the lucid dream will then take, by maintaining a “meditative” attitude, keeping my mind free of extraneous thoughts, and maintaining a quiet, receptive state, whatever occurs will be minimally altered or interpreted by my thinking. As experienced lucid dreamers know, lucid dream thoughts easily become manifest in imagery and sensations.
Essentially, the development of skill in controlling the content of a lucid dream has made it easier for me to deliberately give up control of content while maintaining an intended frame of mind, focusing on clarity of consciousness rather than specific dream content. I am indebted here to the Tibetan exercise termed “transmutation of dream content,” the altering of dream phenomena by which one strives to understand the nature of mental phenomena in general, and the applying of that understanding in gaining states of increased awareness (Evans-Wentz, 1935).
The following dream in November of 1986 further illustrates the role of these factors. Becoming lucid after recognizing an anomaly in the dream,
. . . immediately I hop into the air to verify by hovering, but the scene changes and I am in a very dark room, feeling vulnerable. I try spinning three or four times to make the scene change again, unsuccessfully. I can sense other entities in the darkness. I calm myself intentionally with deep breaths and assurances to myself that it’s only a dream and to not be afraid. Finally after a few minutes I manage to find a door and go outside. It is light and pretty with trees and flowers, a great relief from the dank darkness. As I walk, I repeat aloud . . ., “This is a dream,” until it no longer seems necessary.
I encounter a man I seem to know. He is pleasant and I ask if he wants to fly with me. We lock arms and leap into the air. Almost immediately we encounter vast, thick tree branches and strips of bamboo like a canopy and have to separate to pass through. I continue alone and encounter very fine wires about eight inches apart which block the entire sky. I force my way through and get above them, then fly out over the vast landscape. I remember that I wanted to meditate and think of going into a floating meditation in the sky. But I continue to marvel at the stability of the perceptions, concentrating on the minute detail of the flowers and moss on the ground as I land. To fly too much would tire me, as I know from past experience.
My friend joins me again and we talk about the world around us. He seems to marvel with me, as I say that this seems like a parallel universe or fourth dimension. I then try to meditate, sitting on the grass, but he keeps interrupting me. I remember Stephen’s admonition to me to not always ignore dream characters, and minutes later he seems to dissipate into me. I go on flying and exploring on the ground for awhile, concentrating much of the time on keeping my mind free of thoughts, to simply perceive the dream world around me as deeply as possible. I ask for some help, saying “Highest Father-Mother, help me to get the most from this,” and just relax, floating in the sky. Shortly thereafter I experience potent flashes of awareness of extreme clarity— what seem to be glimpses of a higher reality, in some way deeply personal and familiar. One of these flashes is accompanied by an image from afar of an Eastern spiritual master I admire. I feel convinced that these glimpses are indeed flashes of a higher reality, and can honestly say it is one of the most intensely spiritual experiences of my life. Eventually, after about half an hour, I begin to awaken.
Although I did not succeed at spinning in the above dream, many other times success enabled me to maintain lucidity for long periods, sometimes with ecstatic experiences. This dream includes many of the factors described earlier: efforts to maintain lucidity, overcoming fear and obstacles, appealing to the “Higher,” relinquishing control over dream content, and maintaining a receptive attitude.
In conclusion, I want to encourage others to try the approach described. However, it is easy to fall into the assumptions that doing steps A, B and C will cause result D. In my experience of lucid dreaming, there are underlying currents or themes of my spiritual life that have been present for a long time. Sri Ramakrishna once said, “No matter how much you churn water, you won’t get butter.” The most important ingredient may therefore be the synergistic interaction of the method with my long searching for the higher life. My hunch is that the approach will interact in a similar way for others, but it may produce different results in conjunction with the materials, motivations and vision of their own inner life. My intention is to suggest possibilities that a lucid dreamer can experiment with and adapt to his or her own development as a way of deepening the state.
It seems that sufficient motivation is necessary to take such steps in a lucid dream, as well as the help of the deepest parts of one’s psyche in order to make this process fruitful, and that involves looking inside oneself to try to identify one’s own deepest drives or motivations or spiritual yearnings. I am quite excited about the possibilities for this type of lucid dream, and would like to hear of the experiences of others in this regard.

References

Evans-Wentz, W.Y. (1935). Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines. London: Oxford University Press.

LaBerge, S. (1985). Lucid Dreaming. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.

Tart, C.T. (1984). Terminology in lucid dream research. Lucidity Letter,3(1),82.

##### I.6 Ordinary Dreams, Lucid Dreams and Mystical Experience

###### GEORGE GILLESPIE

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

It is difficult to give a definition of mystical experience that would satisfy every scholar. I use the expression mystical experience to mean an apparent experience of some reality greater than oneself that comes by transcending, to some degree, awareness of one’s own physical and mental self and one’s physical surroundings. This reality may be understood as God or some other spiritual being, brahman, Being, the universe, oneness, the void, or nirvana. I would distinguish for my purposes here between the phenomenon that is seen as the mystical experience itself and other more incidental phenomena that precede or accompany the mystical experience, such as visions of disks of light, the feeling of levitation, or bliss.
I believe that the phenomena reported in mystical accounts, whether essential to the mystical experience or incidental to it, can often be understood in terms of dreaming, particularly lucid dreaming, in which the dreamer knows he or she is dreaming. Let me be clear that I accept neither ordinary dreaming nor lucid dreaming to be mystical experience. But there is an observable continuum from ordinary dreaming to phenomena of mysticism. Just as lucid dreaming may develop out of ordinary dreaming, phenomena associated with mystical experience may develop out of lucid dreaming, particularly such phenomena as visions of darkness or light, the elimination of objects of consciousness, or apparent experience of God. I base my observation on my own experience with frequent lucid dreams over a period of years. My main concern here is to show the progression from ordinary dreaming through lucid dreaming to the phenomena of mysticism, not to examine the phenomena in detail.

Initial Phenomena

When I fall asleep I lose perception of the external world. A combination of visions, locutions and physical sensations serve as alternates to waking perception. I forget almost everything. My rationality is limited. What I know is not based on my perception or memory or rationality. I act and speak spontaneously. My dreams are often unusual, confusing, ambiguous and difficult to remember. Often, a dream leaves me with a feeling of its importance, but I am unable to express what happened. Dreams are often ineffable.
Ordinary dreams are not mystical experience even though they may have some of the characteristics of mystical experience—loss of perception of the external world, visions, locutions, loss of memory and rationality, spontaneous knowledge, and ineffability. I still experience images that originate in and appear in myself. Although I have apparently transcended awareness of my physical surroundings, I have not transcended myself.
At times I become lucid in a dream, that is, I come to know I am dreaming. This often happens in dreams in which I think a little more clearly than usual or in dreams that are brighter or clearer than usual. Mymemory, if it improves at all, improves only slightly after dream lucidity develops. I am still much closer to ordinary dream mental capabilities than to waking capabilities. And I am still not aware of my physical surroundings or circumstances. I may continue acting and reacting spontaneously as in ordinary dreams, or I may purposefully make changes in the dream.
Lucid dreaming is not in itself mystical, even though I can bring about many changes in the dream that make it very different from ordinary dreaming. For instance, once I know I am dreaming, I may proceed to fly, I may sing a hymn or pray with no inhibition, or I may hug a threatening beast fearlessly and domesticate it. But I have not yet transcended my mental activity or the images that I produce.

Elimination of Entanglements

However when I know I am dreaming, I can act purposefully to eliminate my mental activity and dream images, the two being closely related. If I can think to do so, I can close my (dreamed) eyes to eliminate visual images. This produces darkness. I still need to eliminate the remaining aural and tactual images, body awareness and the mental activity that produces the images. To do this I must detach myself from the remaining ongoing dream manifestations and concentrate my attention on the darkness which is, so to speak, before my eyes. This is often not easy to do because voices speak to me, dogs bark, hands grab at me and other manifestations disturb me. These disturbances I call “entanglements.” If all goes well, as I concentrate I gradually lose awareness of my dreamed body —the feeling of being supported (on the ground or whatever), the lower part of the body, then the upper part of the body, and last of all the area around the eyes, which is the area most in my awareness. What I lose awareness of no longer exists in the dream. In this way I approach the elimination of all dream imaging.
But as I concentrate, many other things can happen instead of my gradually losing body awareness. Normally while dreaming I feel as attached to the ground or the floor or whatever supports me as I do when awake. But when I start to concentrate my attention away from my body I lose awareness of my attachment to the ground. Almost invariably I then feel my legs rise up in front of me and I float up involuntarily. I think of that as “losing my anchor.” This type of “levitation” often precedes the very realistic sensation of shooting through the air at great speed, which has been called in mystical literature “the flight of the spirit.” I have experienced levitation and flight outside of the dream context as well, in a condition that seems to be between the sleeping and waking states. The two are essential elements of what is called out-of-body experience, a phrase I prefer to avoid.
Sometimes when I float or toss about I see lights in patterns, with color and movement. These patterns of light have appeared only after I have set about to disrupt the dreaming process by closing my eyes and concentrating, that is only while I am lucid. At times I have seen a disk of light of no set size, usually appearing in the darkness that I have brought about. I have seen disks of light only in the lucid dream context. Disks of light are occasionally mentioned in mystical literature, but my experience of the disk has not been religious.
If conditions permit me to concentrate for long without entanglements, without floating or any added sense experience, I gradually lose body awareness and approach the total elimination of objects of consciousness. Mental activity ceases. I have reached this point of pure consciousness, but have not held onto it that I know of. Inasmuch as sense awareness and mental activity have ceased, I have transcended my physical and mental self. By interpretation after the event this may be considered a mystical state—the experience of brahman, the void, or what one may. But there is no religious feeling and nointerpretation at the time. I can eliminate dreaming with particular methods similar to those used in certain meditative traditions, but only if I am lucid—only if I proceed without problems. Let me add that I used these methods without precise knowledge or study of particular procedures.

Fullness of Light

The final phenomenon is the fullness of light. This light has appeared only while I dreamed lucidly, but it has not been brought about by my own action in any obvious way. It has appeared while I was in darkness or in a significant room or while engaged in religious activity. It usually appears like the sun moving down from above my head until all I see is brilliant light. I become aware of the presence of God and feel spontaneous great joy. As long as I direct my attention to the light, I gradually lose awareness of my dreamed body.
To lose dream imagery and awareness of myself in the evident presence of God, is to experience transcendence of myself. This is the experience, whatever the explanation. Fullness of light, awareness of God, gradual loss of awareness of myself, joy (often called bliss), and uncontrollable devotion are phenomena mentioned commonly in mystical literature. These experiences of mine have proceeded only out of the context of lucid dreaming.
My purpose has been to show my progression from ordinary dreaming through lucid dreaming to phenomena found in reports of mystical experience. I have not intended to make a statement on the meaning of these experiences, nor of mystical experience in general.

##### I.7 Conscious Mental Stillness in Dreams . . .

###### ELINOR GEBREMEDHIN

Berwyn, Pennsylvania

Editor’s Note: This excerpt from a much longer account presents a dream that shows an especially clear progression from nonlucid dreaming to lucid dreaming to another state of consciousness. It is obvious from the language that the dreamer had not previously heard of “pure consciousness.” Rather than a reorganization of memory, this dream is an unprecedented experience; its primary “message” to the dreamer, perhaps, is that spontaneous new experiences of other states are possible.

Lucid Dream Within A Dream (8/2/84–2)
Dreamed I was in Center City Philadelphia after midnight, on the northeast corner of 16th Street and the Vine Street Expressway, waiting to catch a bus to go home. I was very tired and struggling with myself to stay awake. I leaned against a telephone pole, drowsily trying to remain upright and conscious while my mind clouded and dipped. Fatigue made every part of my body feel full of sand. Finally I could remain conscious no longer. I sat down on the curb, leaned my head against the pole and went to sleep, hoping I would wake when the bus came.
I immediately started to dream a lucid dream. In this dream’s dream, my consciousness cohered into a lucid clarity that was in marked contrast to my mental functioning in the first part of the dream. I looked around alertly, head high, without feeling any sense of tiredness. I was on a railroad station platform with a male companion to my right. We were waiting for a train. “Lucid,” I said to myself under my breath. As I continued to look around and take in this dream environment, I saw that it was late at night, and the train was rolling up. The wind blew my hair against my cheek with a distinct physical sensation, and I felt how this dream hair was black, not my usual light brown. I als felt taller, thinner, and healthier.
This sensing of my characteristics as “different” made me think of that self that was asleep, leaning against the telephone pole . . . and it was THAT sleeping self I mistakenly thought of as the self that was dreaming the dream, not the real physical self at home in my bed in Berwyn. In other words, even though I was completely aware that I was dreaming, and thought I was thinking clearly, I wrongly identified the situation of my physical me as being the one sleeping against the telephone pole.
My companion and my lucid dream self climbed into the train as soon as it came to a halt. We found that it was separated into compartments, like some European trains are, so we went into one of them. My companion was a quiet, good-natured, moderately good-looking, scholarly fellow, who immediately settled down to read a book. I felt a need of sleep, but it was quite different than the desperate way the first “I” needed sleep. The lucid “I” didn’t exactly feel tired, but just felt the need of stopping the movement in my mind for a while.
The need presented itself as a kind of knowledge rather than a physical sensation.
I lay down on the seat facing my companion, with a sense of nonworry, because I knew he would wake me when we arrived, or if anything untoward occurred. However, as soon as the train started up, I had difficulties because the rocking movement threatened to pitch me off on the floor. As I struggled to stay put, I dipped in and out of sleep. Finally I got up and lay down on the floor, twining my arms around one of my trusted companion’s legs, and using his foot as a pillow. He raised his eyebrows in an expression of mild surprise, so I explained, “The ground is one place you can’t fall down from.” He sat very still, perfectly immobile so as not to disturb me, and returned to his reading. I felt secure in my sleeping place, and in the atmosphere of caring that he exuded.
Then I fell into a deep sleep, but it was an odd kind of sleep, because I did not black out into unconsciousness. I remained lucid, still aware I was asleep, but all mental movement stopped, all thinking of ideas halted. Maybe instead of having a lucid dream, with ideas, feelings and a plot going on, I was having a lucid sleep. My mind and all the rest of me was simply clear, like a deep transparent lake where all currents have been stilled. This mental immobility felt like it lasted for a relatively long duration . . . fifteen or twenty minutes, or maybe even an hour. I don’t mean that during all this time there was an image of a lake in my mind, but that’s the best likeness I can think of to point to the big transparent stillness that just sat there, with no thoughts going on.
Then I “awoke” from this deep lucid sleep, not into the lucid dream, but into the original nonlucid level of the dream. I felt tremendously refreshed, but alarmed, because I felt it was now 1:00 a.m., and I might have missed the bus. I thought about the “dream” I had just had, and suddenly realized what a dope I was to be standing here and waiting for the bus. I should be taking a train, just like in the dream, because all I had to do was walk a few blocks, six blocks or so, and I would be at the train station (the waking life distance is about four blocks), and I could go directly home.
I thought, ‘I must have been really tired to just stop here and start waiting for this bus, when I would have had to change busses, and besides, Philadelphia busses are not reliable anyway.’ I wondered if one of the busses had already passed me by. I decided to “take my dream’s advice” (as I put it to myself), and go immediately to the train station. I woke just as I started to walk down the street.
When I woke from this dream, which included an experience I had never had nor even heard of before, I did not feel so much ecstatic or excited as enormously NORMAL and very healthy (which was unusual, since I was leading a frantic life mothering five children and working in the computer industry at the same time). The picture of my exhaustion at the beginning of the dream was a good representation of the way I felt most of the time when I went to bed, and sometimes when I got up, too. The distinct sense of deep refreshment from what I then labeled “mind-stillness” was carried into the waking life day. My notes from that time show that I felt great for a number of days, not just one. I conjectured at the time that if I knew how to do this at will, I would need very little sleep to operate at optimum levels. I thought I might even live longer as well as feel great.
This seems just the opposite of conventional wisdom, which has it that you need to black out into a deep unconscious sleep to be reallyrefreshed.

##### I.8 Awake in the Dark: Imageless Lucid Dreaming

LINDA L. MAGALLÓN

San Jose, California

Most dream research, interpretation methodology and reports of dreaming phenomena presuppose that a dream consists of visual impressions. Even the term LUCIDITY evokes the vividness and clarity of dream imagery. Yet, imageless lucidity can and does occur at all levels of dreaming.
As the dreamer drifts into dreaming through lucid hypnagogia, watching the imagery flicker and metamorphose, she or he may encounter a “blank” period just before the dream scene appears. In this state, there is no sensation but rather the general impression that the dream is “taking a breath” before forming a landscape in the dreamer’s mind.

The Initial Awakening State

This is the lucid equivalent of the false awakening state, reported by such notables as Dr. van Eeden and Oliver Fox. The dreamer may become aware of auditory stimuli unrelated to waking sounds. If tactile sensation is retained, the dreamer can eventually experience a sense of duality or bilocation as he or she moves into deeper dreaming. None of this need be accompanied by images.
An excerpt from my own dream journal provides an example of this state, experienced as an imageless dream:
[When the hypnagogic images fade,] I become aware of a continuous conversation, which I assume means I have reached a telepathic level. I concentrate to determine the quality of this level in order to conjure it up in the waking state. It seems quite removed from full waking sensations, and is characterized by a low buzzing. The conversation sounds like a male news reporter announcing for a radio station, so I listen carefully for the call letters, expecting they’ll start with a “K.” Instead, I hear “HBO.”
I now become aware of a conversation of my two children, who seem to be lying next to me. I can even feel my arms around one of them. Vic is talking about my feet. I sense that both are younger than they are in waking life, about toddler and elementary age. I am concurrently aware that in fact they are much older and the only person in bed with me is my husband, Manny. However, I keep my emotions neutral in order to experience the simultaneous awareness.
Then my lucidity leaves as I begin to hear people talking down the hall: I presume they are Victor and my mother. It seems my mother comes into the room and starts to tell Manny about a girl friend who is returning to school. “She’s going back to take American History,” she says. My response is to wish that she would shut up. I groggily think how rude it is to talk so loud when someone is trying to sleep, but I don’t want to rouse myself completely out of the dream state in order to tell her so. I finally become lucid once again, realizing the illogic of my mother’s presence in the house.
After a pause, a bright scene springs up
The initial awakening state can be a launching platform for either lucid dreams or out-of-body experiences. Steve M. reported a series of dreams in which he felt himself to be rising in the air above his bed. He experienced no images because he kept his dream eyes closed. It took several such experiences before he gathered the courage to “open his eyes” and look down at the bed beneath him. Unfortunately,the first attempt resulted in the opening of his physical eyes, too! Subsequent experiences have remedied the situation.
Monroe (1977) reported encountering entities, being touched or having a feeling of suspense or pressure while in darkness. One of Celia Green’s (1968) OBE subjects described “walking around the bedroom” without seeing anything.

Conversing in the Dark

This dream is all audio and contains no visual images. The dreamer dialogues with persons whom are recognized but unseen throughout the course of the dream. Rina D.’s dream is an example:
I’m talking to JG, as if on a phone, and at first he seems not to know who I am, speaking of some upsetting things that have been going on in his life. When I thank him for the First Day Covers he has arranged to have sent to my stamp-collecting husband in the days of important (Space Shuttle) launches, he realizes who’s talking to him. We discuss Challenger and its destruction
She reported another audio dream the same night:
a voice [said], “Hello.” I recognized it immediately [as] that of a close friend with whom I had been speaking the day before but had had to cut short his long distance call because of an interruption. When I heard the voice I was quite excited, hoping to lucidly continue the conversation, but I apparently broke the connection and woke up

Exploring the Imageless Dream

Some lucid dark periods are involuntary. Night falls, the dreamer loses his or her focus or is spontaneously projected backwards or forwards into dark spaces.
But dream lucidity enables willful entry into darkness. De Saint-Denys (1982) reported multiple occasions in which he closed his eyes in order to change the course of a lucid dream. Quick movement such as flying or utilizing Stephen LaBerge’s spinning technique can cause temporary loss of scenery. I’ve walked through walls and passed through holes in walls in order to get “outside” of my dreamscape. By far the easiest method for me is one I told to Robert W.:
Paul H. and I are in a fairly murky room. I realize that I am dreaming and decide to pick up a glass bottle or vase to smash against the room’s fireplace mantle in order to see how it will break in the dream state. Then I decide, “Why make a mess?” so I put it aside. I remember Linda Magallón’s wave technique in which she waves away a dream scene, and I decide to try it. I wave my hand and everything vanished. Complete, total fog—except for my friend’s voice. This amazed me. I looked into the nothingness and decided to wake up.
It is possible to retain the dream even when the images fade, however, by concentrating on alternate senses. These options have all proved successful for me:

######

###### Auditory stimuli

listening to voices or music

concentrating on my breathing

beginning or continuing a conversation

###### Tactile stimuli

rubbing or opening my eyes

touching my body, hands and face

touching objects: glasses, hair brush, edge of mirror

being touched, hugging

flying; feeling stretched out in the air

I also take advantage of the darkness to change location: moving forward or back; calling out a destination or person’s name. I might try to encourage the re-emergence of the scenery by projecting an “imaginary” image and see if it takes or by ordering “please increase the light.” But one of the most satisfying solutions is to simply relax and wait for another scene to spring up. The dark can be quite warm and friendly. Beyond the imagery and sensations related to and dependent upon physical orientation is an arena in which no symbols are encountered, visual or otherwise. The “predream state” or the “undifferentiated area” is that part of the dream universe in which all awareness of the self as body or special entity leaves. It is also characterized by peace, silence, and absence of visual stimuli.

Returning Through Hypnopompia

At times a dreamer will be in contact with his own mental processes, in which ideas stream together or concepts are moved around like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle or experienced in total. Images, if they do form, take on the appearance of sentences or geometric forms. A nondreaming sleeper might awaken from this state with a phrase or sentence or answer to a problem fresh in his mind.
To become aware of such processes can involve a shift toward the waking state. “Clicking” into the hypnopompic allows the opportunity to consciously translate some of the nonvisual impressions into images or verbal thought.
The hypnopompic, like the hypnagogic state, is also an excellent receptor of vocal conversations, music and other aural stimuli and does not require visual imagery.
Imageless dreams seem to be related to the characteristics inherent in the particular dream state of the volition and expectations of the dreamer. Further exploration will help determine the differences.

References

Green, C. (1968). Lucid dreams. Oxford, England: The Institute of Psychophysical Research.

Green, C. (1968). Out-of-body experiences. Oxford, England: The Institute of Psychophysical Research.

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

Monroe, R. (1977). Journeys out of the body. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.

Roberts, J. (1986). Seth, dreams and projections of consciousness. Walpole, New Hampshire: Stillpoint Publishing.

Saint-Denys, Hervey de (1982). Dreams and how to guide them. London: Duckworth.

##### I.9 Experimentation With the Vortex Phenomenon in Lucid Dreams

###### KENNETH MOSS

Wayne State University, Ohio

The “vortex phenomenon” is an experience in which there is the sensation of whirling through a vortex. . . . The commonly reported “tunnel experience” I feel is a subsection of the fully developed vortex. This phenomenon and various equivalents have been reported as an associated finding in a variety of situations such as near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, artistic works, mystical experiences, drug-induced hallucinations (Siegal, 1977), epileptic and schizophrenic twilight states (Mayer-Gross, 1969), hostage hallucinations, hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations, and dreams. It is usually transitional in nature and sometimes associated with feelings of bliss, creativity and the sense of a new beginning or of a major advancement. Early in my lucid dreaming research, this phenomenon occurred sporadically; following my increased interest, it occurred approximately five to ten times a month. In most circumstances, the vortex was imposed with no significant control. The purpose of the author’s experimentation was to discover techniques that would eventually permit direct induction and control of the phenomenon in lucid dreams The qualities of awareness and volition found in lucid dreams [allow] radical changes of the visual field, resulting in the predominance of the vortex sequence. These are overall strategies from the view of the dreamer within the lucid dream.
The first induction strategy, which I have termed “field acceleration,” is based on the movement implied in my definition of the vortex phenomenon. This strategy is illustrated in the following lucid dream account.
In this lucid dream, I was walking along a trail and decided to form a vortex. I then began running fast and attained an incredible speed, at which time the scenery was streaked out. The light trailers coalesced, forming a vortex and my momentum continued as I whirled through the vortex (Moss, 1985).
Elements of the visual field were streaked into forming a vortex. This change may be accomplished either by apparent movement of the dreamer or the visual field. The initial result may be similar to photographs obtained with prolonged exposure when “zooming” with a telephoto lens (Bohen & Millard, 1984). Although the initiating movement may be linear, a rotational component is necessary for a fully developed vortex. Visual field arcing, pulsation and scintillation also facilitate the sensation of movement and dreamer participation. This generation of movement extends beyond induction and is an important factor in the regulation and outcome of the vortex.
The second induction strategy is very similar to the first, but lacks the speed effect. In this strategy, which could be termed “field accent,” certain visual elements are enlarged and brought closer to the dreamer. This method is exemplified in the following lucid dream.
In this lucid dream, I was viewing from some distance a vivid cloud formation out of a window. I decided to enlarge the scene until I was viewing at close range. A large screen developed a three-dimensionality. I found myself in a cloud field. As the field began to rotate, a vortex was formed and I felt myself to be in synchrony with the clouds.
As a result of the interactive viewing, an element is transformed from something that is distant into something interacting with the dreamer. The close-up perspective may enhance certain patterns that are more accessible to the vortex threshold. Close-range screen viewing is commonly reported in experiences in which the vortices occur. This process usually lacks the speed effect as found in field accel-eration, although the enlargement may create the illusion of movement, which would eventually take over the dream sequence.
The last induction strategy I have termed “field involution” and is described in the following dream.
In this lucid dream, I closed my eyes, which resulted in a visual field of strobo-scopic multi-colored floaters. I then induced a vortex by contracting the visual field and myself down to a singularity. I then seemed to regain dimensionality and underwent a frenzied altered state.
In this strategy the visual field is contracted inward and the resulting involutional action forms a vortex. This process is also suggested in the definition of the vortex phenomenon. The initial phase may resemble the perspective obtained with a wide-angle lens. The form that the vortex takes is quite variable and, as already noted, numerous visual elements can be [incorporated]. These include tunnels, funnels, spirals, cones, star fields, kaleidoscopic fields, geometric patterns, lattices, cob-webs, spectral arrays, entoptic patterns and light rays.
Volitional factors are important in the regulation of the vortex experience, especially the intention not to be distracted and to be deliberate in the maintenance of the vortex. Prior or concurrent onset of lucidity facilitated the induction and regulation of the vortex phenomenon in my dreams. Lucidity allowed a large degree of volitional control [and] preservation of the innate nature of the dream. Also important were flow momentum factors such as ongoing visual field movement and stroboscopic effects.
Vortex experimentation resulted in a transitional break with the baseline dream flow. A common outcome was the alteration and/or accentuation of feelings and emotions.
The visual experience induced a change in the dreamer’s visual reference perspective and lighting field. The resulting activity of the visual pattern may be a factor in producing vibrational of synćsthetic resonance I often experienced. These sensations were especially pronounced if synchronized with stroboscopic elements of the vortex or various tinnitus-like sounds.
The vortex terminated when the dreamer was startled into an abrupt awakening (real or false) or was distracted and veered from the vortex course. On other occasions the vortex would head to an alternate landscape or would eventually dissolve. Sometimes it would be interfered with by another dream sequence flow.
The regulatory factors identified were found to be important in vortex development. They may represent elements that allow a more controlled vortex experimentation.

###### References

Bohen, E. & Millard, H. (1984) Zooming. Modern Photography, 48(4), 76+.

Mayer-Gross, W., Slater, E., & Roth, M. (1969). Clinical psychiatry.

Siegal, R. (1977). Hallucinations. Scientific American, 237(4), 132–140.

##### I.10 A Journal of Attempts to Induce and Work with Lucid Dreams: Can You Kill Yourself While Lucid?

###### BRUCE G. MARCOT

Portland, Oregon

Editor’s Note: This somewhat abbreviated version has fewer examples of Experiment 1 than the original.

The following is a narrative of my attempts to create lucid dreams and my ex-periments with the lucid dream state. I cite the journal notes I kept during that time period. The technique I used to induce lucid dreams was to “find my hand” (ŕ la the technique described in Carlos Castaneda’s books). This entailed concentrating on my hand to remind myself that I was dreaming. If the image wavered or faded, I would avert my vision for a moment then concentrate on my hand again, to renew the focus.
Initially, it took a great effort to create the lucid dream state. At the beginning, before falling asleep I would concentrate on wanting to find my hand in a dream I then began a series of within-dream experiments to investigate the mental and phys-ical properties of the lucid dream state. These investigations involved exercising con-trol over the dream events; conducting intellectual exercises, such as recalling long series of numbers; attempting to purposefully harm myself; and creating an awareness of my physical (sleeping) body. Specifically, I established four experiments as a sort of stepwise increase in power or control in the dream-conscious state:

1. Find my hands and maintain their image;

2. “Stop the world,” ŕ la Carlos Castaneda;

3. Close my eyes in a lucid dream; and

4. Commit suicide in a lucid dream.

Over a period of time I was able to exercise great control over entering the lucid dream state and controlling the dream. The following journal entries depict this effort . . .:
Incredible dream of great awareness and control. Dreamed I was in a house or man-sion somewhere and suddenly realized I was dreaming. It was a sudden cognitive awareness of being simultaneously conscious and dreaming. I now think back and realize that in this dream I was consciously thinking in words; I cannot recall whether I think in words this way in other, normal dreams. It seemed quite unique.
After realizing I was dreaming, I found my hands. I stared at them for a short while, and they blurred/faded slightly, so I averted my vision to a hallway or room I was in, then looked at them again. I became fascinated with my conscious directive of seeing my hands. The very lines in my palms were quite distinct, and I found I could stare at them increasingly longer without losing the image.
Then, to consciously test my power, I willed my sister Vivian to appear. She did, but then turned into my girlfriend Rosemary. I was fully conscious and aware that all the forms I was seeing, all of my sensations were subconscious and a dream. I was quite delighted with being able to control this “power” of awareness and being able to make things happen outside of myself, retaining an aloof, cognitive alertness.
Then I left Rosemary and went into another room (which resembled the bathroom of the present apartment). Someone slowly followed me in (either Vivian or Rosemary), but I was staring at both my hands, held a bit below eye level, trying to concentrate on them. I recall I thought (not spoke) “No, they (meaning whoever followed me in) are not really there. This is just a dream, a dream. They’re not there, not in a form that I’m con-sciously familiar with.” I was trying to shut out this external dream-world form, concen-trating on my form only. I found that instead of averting my vision when occasionally necessary to maintain a clear image of my hands, if I moved my hands continually (I tried interlocking my fingers in various fashions . . . and even counted my fingers), or if I held them at eye level, fingers spread, and turned slowly in circles to see the background scene move in the space between the fingers and hands, I could maintain the image.
7 May 1976 (Friday). After a lapse of almost a month since my last dream-conscious experience, I dreamed again of finding my (left) hand.
The dream-conscious state came to me as I was walking in my dream. I suddenly realized I could do what I please in the dream form and began flying. I recalled my month-long lapse, and happily found my left hand, before awakening at 1:30 am.

“Stop the World”

The second objective for controlling my dreams was to “stop the world” (a Carlos Castaneda term), meaning maintain a conscious awareness of dreaming, while dreaming, and to consciously refute the seemingly substantial “form” of things around me in the dream. This objective included attempting to meditate in a dream, which I was never able to execute. Events from the 30 January dream (above) illus-trate an attempt to refute the dream image. Following is another example in which I was unsuccessful in refuting the dream image:
23 March 1976 (Tuesday). Recall a dream in which I was battling with my motorcycle helmet face shield, which had grown in size 50% and had come alive. As I held it at arm’s length, I noticed my left hand, and instantly this brought on the dream-conscious state. I was trying to refute the form of the dream (the shield was trying to choke me), by reiterating that it is “just a dream.” I awoke soon after.

Close My Eyes

The third objective was to close my eyes in a dream. I have never recalled doing this before; I wanted to explore what would happen.
27 February 1976 (Friday). Found my right hand, and had the experience of being si-multaneously awake and asleep. I remembered the experiment of closing my eyes while dreaming, and carried it out. I was staring at a landscape, brightly lit, and then closed my eyes in my dream. The landscape turned to blackness; I was looking at nothing, yet I was still consciously thinking in the dream. In a short time I lost my conscious power and lapsed into a long, normal dream, and awoke after that.

Commit Suicide

The final, and most precarious experiment, was to commit suicide in a dream. I had already had two dreams several years earlier in which I had died. In one, I fell of a cliff, actually hit bottom, felt bones break, skin tear, my body bounce, rocks cut, etc., and I blacked out thinking, ‘I’m dying, this is it, I’m dying ‘ The other dream was one of being shot by a shotgun—with the same feelings and same thoughts. But to consciously direct my demise in a dream world would yield . . . what? I must find out.
The following dream sequences illustrate my experiences with this objective. The discussion in the 6 March entry is particularly significant, in that I began to be-come aware of bodily sensations while dreaming.
13 February 1976 (Friday) I then left the room and tried to recall what I had earlier thought about if I should ever have a dream such as this one. Anyhow, in my present dream I left the bathroom and could only recall my idea of suicide (for some reason I forgot about the other experiment objectives). In the dream, I recalled another dream I had had several months earlier where I was also consciously aware of it being a dream; in that other dream, I was overlooking a spiral staircase descending into dizzying depths and darkness, and felt a surge of vertigo, and thought or said “Oh no, I’m not going down there!” In the present dream, recalling the setting of that earlier dream, I consciously re-created the scene of looking down the center of the spiral staircase. I was able to control my setting. My plan was to jump over and kill myself. But, upon leaning over the edge, I began to think, ‘Wait a moment. I know this is only a dream, and I can’t really get hurt, but how do I know for sure that this won’t affect me some other way? After all, it’s said that one may suffer a heart attack if the strain of a dream is too great.’ (Apparently, in this dream, I forgot my other earlier dreams of dying, that I can indeed survive such a shock.) I hesitated jumping, and felt unsure or unconfident. I decided not to try it.
I awoke sometime soon afterwards, but details between aren’t clear.
6 March 1976 (Saturday morning—6:30 to 11:00 am). Found my hand several times between which I surfaced to a semi-wakefulness state, twice. Details are now vague.
This morning, I had awakened from 5:00-6:30 am to drive toward the beach to view a comet visible in the eastern, dawning sky. It was quite cold out, so I had worn gloves while driving the VW bus. i had returned home and went back to sleep by 6:30 am. One of the ensuing dreams was of driving in the van. I looked at my right hand, gloved, and brought upon the conscious/unconscious state. Someone had been in the van with me in this dream, talking incessantly, but as soon as I established my conscious internal thought I began to tune them out. I suddenly recalled my experiment objective of dream-suicide, and saw the perfect opportunity. However, I first “checked” with myself to make certain I was dreaming (more on this later), and then purposely, consciously veered off the road toward some trees. The van came to an abrupt halt before touching the trees, however, not as part of my conscious directive, but of the subconscious, as if strong brakes had been applied. The scene then faded and blurred.
I found my hand perhaps twice again in different settings, but details are unclear.
In retrospect, I am curious about why I could not succeed in striking the trees. Why was I not able to consciously direct this action, and why did my subconscious succeed [in preventing me]? This has not been the first case thus far of failing in a dream once a conscious directive had guided my actions. It makes me wonder what would happen if my goal was indeed realized. Would I be witness to a final fusion of conscious with subconscious? Or would I witness a forced repression of subcon-scious directives? If it is the former, can I expect conscious, cognitive “understand-ings” to apply to unconscious reactions? And if it is the latter, might this infringe upon my present mental stability? I am seeking not dominance of conscious over subconscious, but fusion. I have no way of telling if I am working in that direction.
Secondly, in retrospect, tying in with this “fusion” idea, I am curious as to how in this dream, as in past dreams, I had “checked” with myself to make sure I was dreaming. How is this done? I believe that while external sensory impressions from my true physical body are usually cut off during sleeping, and the only “sensory” impressions come from within the dream, I am nonetheless using some physical or neural awareness to ascertain the state of my sleeping body. It is as if I had momen-tarily put a “hold” on my dream-impressions and established a reassurance that my physical form was indeed lying down in bed, safe, asleep, dreaming. Then I felt safe in carrying out “dangerous” actions in my dream. So, for an instant, I had tied into my physical body consciously, while being unconscious and enveloped in my dream-impressions. What I ultimately seek is to refine this condition. I want to be able to be fully aware of my physical body, even move it, while in a dream-conscious condition. Again, I can only guess that I am working toward a healthy fusion of conscious with subconscious states, not a dangerous and unhealthy dominance of conscious over subconscious. What I ultimately seek, then, is a capacity, an awareness of dream impressions and physical impressions to be realized simultaneously.
Over time, I became increasingly aware of perceiving actual bodily sensations while in the lucid dream state, as the following entry illustrates:
22 March 1976 (Monday). After awakening several times during the night, I had a short dream of seeing my right hand, while someone was persistently talking to me. Soon afterwards I drifted from the dream state into a semi-wakefulness state, not physically alert, but consciously alert. In this state, I witnessed a dream image merge with my con-scious thoughts. I’m now not certain what transpired, but it felt as though I consciously willed the dream image to come; in the half-wakeful state either immediately succeeding or during this recalling of the dream image, I became physically aware of myself lying in bed, dreaming, and at the same time seeing the dream image. The state transpired too quickly to be certain of the chronology of it all.
Also, in the dream of finding my hand, I consciously carried out a further Experiment I had devised to test my physical feelings in the dream-conscious state: I simply, consciously breathed in the dream. But between the time I found my hand and breathed (seconds), my lips and face felt as if they had gone numb. I forcefully opened my mouth and inhaled sharply, and felt (in the dream) air rush into my lungs. (Whether I also physically inhaled at the same time while lying in bed asleep, I cannot say. If I had, then the sensations I “felt” in the dream of inhaling were those actually physically induced.) Looking back on this dream, I believe that the feeling of numbness of my face may have been actually the feeling of trying to become consciously aware of my physical face while asleep.
At the same time, I was exploring the limits with which I could exercise con-scious, cognitive effort in a dream. To further test the extent, characteristics, and essence of the dream-conscious state, I devised another experiment. Thus far, I had been able to carry out all four experiments I had devised: find my hands, refute dream-forms (block out dream stimuli), close my eyes, and attempt my own demise. Now, to test the extent of conscious in a dream, I memorized the value of pi to 16 decimal places. I wished to try to and reiterate that figure in a dream, to test the re-lationship between long-term memory and the dream state, via concentrated recall effort.
2 April 1976 (Friday). Dreamed I was walking and found my right hand. More often now, the dream-conscious state precedes my lifting my hand to my eyes, as it did in this dream. I recalled my experiment objective of reciting pi in a dream to test the extent of conscious recall, and did so. I recited it mentally; I did not speak in the dream, but consciously thought the numbers. However, as I reached the seventh decimal place, and was forced to exert greater effort to recall the numbers, I failed and rounded the numbers off the seventh place, and stopped there. An instant later, in the dream, I was aware of what I did, but before having time to try again, I awoke.
Eventually, I abandoned the entire series of experiments, ironically because of the success I was having with the last of the experiments. That is, in the lucid dream state, I was able to become acutely aware of my body sleeping in bed. I was asleep, dreaming, but conscious that I was dreaming, and conscious of my actual body in bed, which I could willfully move about. I abandoned the experiments because I be-gan to become confused as to when I was normally asleep, asleep in this lucid dream state, or awake. At one point, I was able to lay in bed, asleep in a lucid dream, with my eyes open and with full consciousness of moving my arms, legs, and face. It was only a step from there to sleep-walking in an aware, lucid dream state. What would distinguish these various states of mind if I was conscious, aware, and able to move? The various realities were beginning to eclipse one another.
6 March 1976. It was over the next few months that I succeeded in inducing a dream-conscious state in which I was simultaneously aware of my physical body. I found this state both fascinating and frightening, as I was beginning to become confused as to various states of mind (sleep, awake, dream-conscious). I dropped the experimentation shortly thereafter.
I found the lucid dream state difficult to abandon. For weeks after I chose to drop the experiments I still found my hand in dreams and entered the lucid state, and often found it most difficult to wake myself. Eventually, the dreams faded and I began to have normal dreams on a regular basis. But to this day, I still have lucid dreams perhaps once a month.

##### I.11 Terminology in Lucid Dream Research

###### CHARLES T. TART

University of California at Davis

George Gillespie, writing in the November 1983 issue of the Lucidity Letter, describes his “lucid dreaming” as including the knowledge that he is dreaming while he is dreaming, but without his consciousness being more like his ordinary waking state than like his ordinary dreaming state (Gillespie, 1983). He asks the question whether his dreaming is lucid by my definition of lucid dreaming: “Lucid dreams are those in which the dreamer is aware that he is dreaming, clearly recalls his waking life, and considers himself to be in full command of his intellectual and motivational abilities” (Gillespie, 1983). This definition is attributed by Gillespie to me, with his referenced source being an article of Tholey’s (1983). I cannot find any statement of mine exactly like this in the referenced article (Tart, 1979), so it is not a direct quote, but it is generally representative of my thinking.
By this definition Gillespie’s dreams are not lucid. In my “From Spontaneous Event to Lucidity” review (Tart, 1979) I put great emphasis on the fact that knowing that you are dreaming while you are dreaming is a necessary, but not a sufficient criterion for labeling a dream “lucid.” The full definition of a lucid dream given in that review article (p. 255) is,
Lucid dreaming is an altered d-SoC (discrete state of consciousness) characterized by the lucid dreamer experiencing himself as located in a world or environment that he intellectually knows is “unreal” (or certainly not ordinary physical reality) while simultaneously experiencing the overall quality of his consciousness as having clarity, the lucidity of his ordinary waking d-SoC.
This is not to say that Gillespie’s dreams are not of interest: far from it. Since Frederick van Eeden (in Tart, 1969) coined the term “lucid dreaming,” however, and since he characterized his dream consciousness as more like waking than dreaming, I think we owe it to van Eeden to reserve the term “lucid dream” for this sort of event, not for any dream in which there is only knowledge that one is dreaming. I shall propose the new term, “dreaming-awareness dreams” to describe ordinary dreams that include some concurrent awareness that one is dreaming, but where this awareness is not accompanied by a shift in consciousness to the altered state of lucid dreaming.
The importance of making this distinction will depend on whether lucid dreams and dreaming awareness dreams ultimately turn out to be part of a continuum of dreaming consciousness or whether lucid dreams (and perhaps dreaming-awareness dreams) are qualitatively different from each other and/or from ordinary dreams. It is vitally important to distinguish them in studies which attempt to correlate various psychological and personal qualities with the occurrence or qualities of lucid dreaming.
For example, Gillespie refers to a study of “lucid dreaming” by Gackenbach in which the questionnaire used defined lucid dreaming simply as “awareness of dreaming while in the dream state.” Given our discussion, this may actually be a study of a mixture, in unknown proportions, of people who have had genuine lucid dreams and people who have never had lucid dreams, but have had dream-awareness dreams. By mixing apples and oranges, possible correlations of either type of dream with psychological factors may have been confused and diluted beyond the point of detectability.
Now my definition of lucid dreaming above, based on van Eeden and my own researches, is a first attempt to clarify an experience that is rather exotic by our cultural norms. That is why I defined the overall quality of lucid dream consciousness as being like ordinary consciousness. This is a good definition given what we know now. If we have the kind of progress in understanding consciousness that I hope we will have, I believe that this definition will be seen as rather crude within the decade. I doubt very much that lucid dreams are exactly like ordinary consciousness in their quality of consciousness. Ordinary consciousness varies in its qualities from moment to moment, especially if you have short samples of it. It is useful to say I am in my “ordinary” state of consciousness now, just as I was an hour ago, but I am sure a two minute sample of my consciousness an hour ago would be different in important ways from a two minute sample of my consciousness taken right now. Lucid dreaming also varies in its qualities from moment to moment. We do not know enough in detail about either state to do more than give overall characterizations at present.
But, we can be reasonably clear in our initial definitions in our writings and in presenting questions to subjects, and thus eliminate some unnecessary confusion. This is a plea to writers and researchers then: use “lucid dreaming” the way van Eeden used it, and use some distinct term(s) for other, interesting dreams that do not meet that definition of lucidity. Otherwise we will waste a lot of time trying to reconcile results from different studies that were all supposedly about “lucid dreams,” but which were actually about different things.

References

Gillespie, G. (1983). Memory and reason in lucid dreams: A personal observation. Lucidity Letter, 2(1), 8–9.

Tart, C. (1979). From spontaneous event to lucidity: A review of attempts to consciously control nocturnal dreaming. In B. Wolman, M. Ullman, & W. Webb (Eds.), Handbook of dreams: Research, theories and applications. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, pp. 226–268.

Tholey, P. (1983). Relation between dream content and eye movements tested by lucid dreams. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 56, 875–878.

van Eeden, F. (1969). A study of dreams. In C. Tart (Ed.), Altered states of consciousness. New York: Wiley, pp. 145– 157.

##### I.12 Dreams, Illusions, Bubbles, Shadows: Awareness of “Unreality” While Dreaming Among Chinese College Students

###### MYRNA WALTERS and ROBERT K. DENTAN

Branch School of Beijing Foreign Languages Institute, Beijing, China; State University of New York at Amherst

Editor’s Note: In this somewhat abbreviated version of the original paper, we focus on three dreams from mainland China which are even closer to the minimalist definition of dream lucidity (awareness of dreaming while dreaming) than those published in Walters’ and Dentan’s (1985) article, “Are Lucid Dreams Universal? Two Unequivocal Cases” In the 1985 article, the authors point out that “the foregoing data are consonant with the speculation that lucid dreaming is a ‘universal,’ found in all societies regardless of whether it is valued in a society.” Although the authors call the dreams presented here “quasi lucid” (and Charles Tart might call them “dreaming-awareness” dreams), the authors’ quasi lucid definition is the same as the minimalist definition of lucidity used for most laboratory or survey work. The first dream, especially, fits minimalist standards because of the phrase, “I knew I was having a dream.”

The recent literature on lucid dreaming (e.g., Purcell et al., 1985) includes some discussion of how to categorize “quasi lucid” states of consciousness, in which dreamers are aware of dreaming but do not control the content of their dreams. Without venturing into the theoretical questions involved, we offer some Chinese data which fall into this category and which suggest a plausible interpretation of such states of consciousness. These data may prove useful to researchers for two reasons. First, nonWestern data of this sort are difficult to locate in the ethnographic literature (cf. Walters & Dentan, 1985), a situation which, among other things, exacerbates the difficulty of disentangling biological determinants of dreaming from cultural ones. Second, the process which we propose to interpret the sort of “quasi lucidity” in these Chinese dreams may be more generally relevant.
The accounts below are from a corpus (n = 67) of dream narratives collected from Chinese college students in Beijing in April and May, 1985. This population seemed homogeneous in terms of age (mostly early 20s), past experience (mostly growing up in the Beijing area) and academic achievement (high). Almost all, including the narrators of the following accounts, are Han. The Han are the dominant ethnic group in China (93.3%) and indeed the largest ethnic group in the world (936,700,000 people). Most Han traditionally regard dreams as insubstantial and illusory. “Mčng huŕn pŕo ying,” goes one four-character aphorism (chéng yu), “Dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows.”6 Although we asked our students to interpret their dreams for us if they felt they could, few could explain their own dreams. Those who tried mostly referred to a two-line aphorism, “Rě you suo si, Yč you suo mčng,” “Day is the locus of yearning, Night is the locus of dreaming,” i.e., one dreams at night about things on one’s mind during the day (cf. Wu Zuguang, 1985, p. 65). A few students offered the interpretative principle that dreams predict the opposite of what is actually to happen (cf. Yi & Xu,1984, p. 60).
We were surprised at how interested many of the students were in reporting their dreams. Programmatic Marxist-Leninist materialism has reinforced traditional dismissive attitudes about dreams to the extent that there seems to be little cultural pressure to have dreams of any kind. Thus there is no social reward for having the sort of dreams described below.
The first two of the three accounts below are word-for-word as written by two twenty-year-old students in the English department of a small Beijing teachers’ college in May, 1985. The first narrative is by a man (#TC 21 in our files) from the city. The crossed-out words (e.g., [high]) are as they appear in his original manuscript.
. . . When I was a middle-school (high school) boy, I often had a peculiar dream. I flied in mid-air, with all my classmates and people I ken knew standing on the group, looking up to me. I flied on and on, high getting higher and higher. However, Moreover, whenever I had such a circumstance, I knew I was having a dream. I didn’t know what it meant to me, at that time, but I think I know the answer now. At that time, I was a top student in a key school (elite school; see Wu Ming, 1985), and I was very, very proud, too proud, perhaps, to find a friend. Being told by teachers and parents that being proud was a bad thing, I tried to hide this feeling deep in my heart. Then, when night came, this idea came out and became a dream like that. I haven’t had this dream for four or five years
The second teachers’ college narrative (#TC 26) is by a woman who had been quarrelling with her father, who wanted her to read serious economic journals instead of the murder mysteries and science fiction which she preferred.
Yesterday, I had a horrible dream, which I think you may be interested in. Here it is.
In the evening, I went out of the school with a stool in my hand. I seemed to have decided to go to my uncle’s home, which is not very far from our school by bus. However, I hadn’t brought any money with me, so I decided to walk there. On my way, I met one of my classmates, who gave me a film ticket and asked me to go to the movie with her. I didn’t refuse. We went into a cinema which had a lot of columns in it, and settled down in our seats. The movie started. The first scene was a beautiful lady holding a bloody woman’s head in her hands. There was a voice explaining that the head had been found on a country road in the suburb. I was so frightened by the scene that I began to cry. My classmate comforted me. The movie went on without showing a title. On the screen, I could see a beautiful seashore with many cheerful people on it. Many of them were wearing swimming suits. Suddenly, I heard a boy crying, “Oh! God! Look! What are these?” I saw on the screen people begin to gather around him, and not far from the place the boy stood, there were two female arms lying on the sand
The third narrative (D8) is by a 23-year-old single male architecture student taking an English course preparatory to going abroad for postgraduate study.
People were playing in the skating ring joyously. Miracle appeared suddenly. Someone were riding bicycles on the surface of melted ice water and didn’t sink! They were moving forward in an incredibly fast speed. One by one, the bicycle driving seemed to be ridiculous. Under the cliff there was the ice surface and on the top of the cliff there was a closet. I was changing my clothes with a man I know well but did know his name in the closet. With a great sound, a bomb exploded in the middle of the cliff. I was just about to look what was happening, another explosion frightened me. I was trying to make myself to believe I was dreaming. It was so horrible. Wake up! It didn’t work. A bomb exploded inside the closet. Fortunately enough, the bomb was one for teaching, and was not very destructive. No one was hurt. Several bombs just travelled in a curved trace to reach us and explode while we were withdrawing. My acquaintance had been wounded. Someone were shouting cheerfully that they had done an excellent experiment. You must be terrified, mightn’t you?” one of my former classmates asked me. I didn’t know where he came from. “No.” I replied, “But my elder brother did.” The dream was copied in Dec. 13, 1982. I am sorry to have chosen such a damned unlucky date to dream it.

###### Summary and Conclusions

In the foregoing dream narratives the dreamer experiences events in the dream as different from mundane reality. The first dreamer “knew” he “was having a dream” when, in his early teens, he repeatedly dreamed of flying. Similarly, the obsessive dismemberments in his classmate’s dream are part of a “movie”; the Chinese phrase for “movie,” diŕn ying (“electric shadows”), echoes the phrase “dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows.” In both cases, the illusory nature of the dream seems manifest in the dream itself. Finally, the architect consciously tries in his dream to convince himself that he is dreaming, in order to wake himself up.
We suggest tentatively that, in these cases, the semiconsciousness of the quasi lucidity of the dreamer serves to open psychological distance between the dreamer and the dream content. In all three cases the dream seems to refer to feelings with which the dreamer is uncomfortable. American readers should remember that Chinese students are exposed to much less graphic violence than American mass media routinely purvey. Against this background, the notion that the sort of quasi lucidity under discussion is a kind of ego defense mechanism against unpleasant feelings seems plausible. Rather than being a way of dealing with problems, in other words, such quasi lucidity may serve to push them away (“dissociate” them), perhaps as a prelude to waking into a state of consciousness in which they are minimized or denied. This suggestion is consistent with clinical evidence (Delaney, personal communication, 1983).

References

Purcell, S., Mullington, J., Pigeau, R., Hoffman, R., & Moffitt, A. (1985). Dream psychology: Operating in the dark. ASD Newsletter, 1(4), 1–4.

Walls, J. (1985). Dream content, experience and attitudes toward dreams in Chinese and American university students. ASD Newsletter, 1(4), 8–9.

Walters, M. & Dentan, R.K. (1985). Are lucid dreams universal? Two unequivocal cases of lucid dreaming among Han Chinese university students in Beijing, 1985. Lucidity Letter, 4(1).

Wu Zuguang (1985; originally 1937). Sleep and dreams (Shůi yu mčng). Chinese Literature, (Summer), 64–67.

Yi Qiong and Xu Junhui (1984). Elephant Trunk Hill: Tales from scenic Guiling. M.A. Bender and K. Shi (Trs.), Beijing: Foreign Language Press.

##### I.13 Conversation Between Stephen LaBerge and Paul Tholey

STEPHEN LABERGE, PAUL THOLEY, and BRIGITTE HOLZINGER, editor.

Stanford University, California; Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Germany; University of Vienna, Austria

Editor’s Note: This interview took place at the 1989 Association for the Study of Dreams (ASD) conference in London. LaBerge and Tholey were already familiar with each other’s work, but met for the first time in person at this conference. Their conversations focused on the concept of the consciousness of dream characters and Tholey’s “mirror technique” for inducing OBEs. We enter as they are discussing what a polygraph record would show if dream figures other than the dream ego were capable of signalling:

LaBerge: So you would like to extend all the studies we have done so far on the dream-ego—making eye movements while singing, counting and doing other activities. For example, if I were dreaming, I could ask the other characters here to sing, hold their breath, whatever . . . and we would see what happens to my physiology when the dream characters signal or hold their breath or sing. My guess is that only one system at a time can have access to the motor output.

Perspectives of the Dream Figures

Tholey: One of my hypotheses is that sometimes one cannot remember a dream because the dream figure conscious of the dream state, is not identical with the dream-ego. The central dream character does not necessarily have to be lucid, but he or she cannot be totally unconscious! [Editor’s Note: For a detailed discussion on consciousness in dream characters, see Tholey, 1989.]

LaBerge: Unconscious of what?

Tholey: The dream-ego, which is identical with the waking ego, doesn’t exist in that situation at all.

LaBerge: Let’s assume that Paul is asleep in bed right now. A dream is occurring. We know that normally you would see a picture, but we don’t know yet if other dream characters, such as me, actually see something or if we merely look to you as if we were seeing. That’s the question we want to answer. Do dream characters see the world?

Tholey: The experiments have shown that the other dream character, who sits facing me at the other side of the table, can paint or draw a picture of me. But, after all, this is a metaphysical question which also inspires psychophysiological experiments.

LaBerge: I think that experiments are necessary, but I think you can explain the same facts by the assumption that there are unconscious processors.

Tholey: Yes, but you can also experience phenomenologically two egos, two sides with two different viewing perspectives.

LaBerge: That interests me very much, because I have never experienced having two separate selves. I have had more than one dream body—here is me and there is another Stephen—but “I” was only at one place at a time.

Tholey: That’s the novel thing. The other experience has often been observed as well. We have had two bodies quite often, two ego-bodies.

LaBerge: Oh, ego-bodies! Bodies are different. The interesting and novel thing is the two selves, the two perspectives. How easy is it for you to produce that?

Tholey: Usually that’s only possible in an out-of-body-experience situation. And then it works in only a third of all cases. It happens when in the dream I cut the dream-self character. If I don’t cut exactly in the middle, I only get one I. I cut the ego-core vertically and horizontally above the abdominal section. The ego-core is the origin of sight (Sicht), the origin of the will, of directing attention of thoughts and of speech. The ego-core can leave the body and can exist as only a point. Although it doesn’t have a mouth, it can still speak.

LaBerge: Yes, but can it move its eyes?

Tholey: No.

LaBerge: That could present a problem. In order to study this, one would want to be able to mark when it happens.

Tholey: So when I leave the body, let’s say in the sleep laboratory, the EEG is nearly normal and the EMG is totally relaxed. I am not paralyzed, though.

LaBerge: So, what stage of sleep are you in?

Tholey: It’s a very extraordinary sleep state. The researchers in the sleep lab couldn’t recognize it!

LaBerge: They would probably call it a “sleep disorder” then!

Tholey: I remember once when I slept in the lab, I was in a lucid state two times for five hours during that night. I was able to direct all the dreams!

LaBerge: I am still interested in the stage of sleep you were in. When you say, “I was lucid the whole night,” do you mean that you have some way of knowing that you were lucid for every minute of the night or that it would happen again and again throughout the night?

Tholey: The physiological data and the phenomenological data prove it. I also signaled in between. There is another important thing that happened. I had the experience that, all of a sudden, I was awake and in a totally different situation and then, all of a sudden, in the dream situation again. I restabilized the dream mainly with eye movements and movements of the body.

LaBerge: Does that mean, that you had one eye movement every 30 seconds throughout these five hours?

Tholey: No, during these five hours I wasn’t restabilizing the dream consciously. I know other people in Frankfurt who are also capable of doing that, but only phenomenologically.

LaBerge: There is a question about this claim—when you say, “I know I was conscious during the whole period of time.” The problem is that we are not conscious of the fact that we are not conscious. So we can have blank moments and not know it. And that is where the signalling could answer the question, but not necessarily for your experience!

Tholey: No, this was not an unconscious state! I have signalled and the people in the sleep lab have told me that I was so totally relaxed that I couldn’t signal with the fingers. I would have probably been able to signal only with the eyes.

Holzinger: I would like to know more about the state which you called “sleep disorder” before.

Tholey: I apparently have mixed up all known sleep stages. Therefore, they say, I’m not the ordinary Middle European and I am a champion dreamer. They had no idea what was going on.

LaBerge: As I was understanding it, it was not a normal sleep stage, but what was it close to?

Tholey: I am sure that before I learned lucid dreaming, I had the same sleep stages as everybody else. It was not a pure REM stage. They haven’t shown the records to me because they want to publish it themselves. They viewed me as only a subject. I was angry about that and therefore we decided to set up our own sleep lab.

LaBerge: Well, I see nothing wrong with publishing it together, that makes sense, but I am surprised that they wouldn’t let you have a copy or see the information.

Tholey: A student showed me some data briefly, but I wasn’t allowed to go through all the data. The professor hasn’t shown the data to me at all. There is hardly any communication in Germany between the sleep researchers and dream researchers, not to mention the lucid dream researchers.

LaBerge: Well, just because you can’t say what exact stage of sleep it’s in, doesn’t mean that you couldn’t, for example, record the EEG on a computer and study the amount of different waves in your records and characterize it. If you have a new way organizing your sleep, that would be interesting to study in itself.

Mirror Technique for OBE Induction

LaBerge: Let’s turn to a different topic. I would like to know more about your “mirror technique” for inducing out-of-body type lucid dreams.

Tholey: The first use of mirror technique is described in an article I wrote—the very first one. There are also some pictures. The pictures aren’t very precise.

LaBerge: I think I understand the idea. When you look in the mirror and see the back of your head, it is easier to transfer your awareness into the mirror, as if you were there.

Tholey: It is better to lie down. You look into the mirror. You are not supposed to see anything except the reflection in the mirror.

LaBerge: Is this supposed to help enter a lucid dream state?

Tholey: At the beginning it is sort of an in-between state; the lights are down. You should be able to see your reflection in the mirror; it’s the same setup as in the work of Klaus Stich (1983; 1989). Later I close my eyes and imagine my head and the sensation of rubbing the back of my head. These sensations are projected into the mirror.

LaBerge: That much is described clearly in the article by Nossack (1989). So I understand that. Are you lying down when you are doing this, so you have the mirror above your bed? Do you rub the back of your head looking in the mirror and projecting the sensation as if it were there? And you do that for how long?

Tholey: At the very beginning it takes very long, at least half an hour. I want to add, that that article is all wrong—that’s journalism!

LaBerge: You mean the picture is upside down?

Tholey: That’s right! There is also another practice. You look at a point in the far distance, then put your two thumbs up in front of you and move them towards you until they merge and you perceive only one thumb.

LaBerge: What’s the purpose of this?

Tholey: With this practice I can stabilize the dream. I can keep my eyes from moving. I look into the space around me and not at a figure in order not to wake up. I can see everything—though slightly blurred—the periphery, front and back.

LaBerge: By doing this in the dream?

Tholey: By using this way of looking in the dream. I am doing it right now. Can you see it? [Editor’s Note: Tholey looks cross-eyed.

LaBerge: So you are saying that you learned to do that in the waking state.

Tholey: Yes, and I can do the same with closed eyes.

LaBerge: You practice in the waking state so you can do it in the dream?

Tholey: Yes. It is also useful while doing sports. The other day I was snowboarding. I jumped and watched what happened with and under my feet and, at the same time, saw the environment and landscape around me. I saw the whole space, not as distinctly as if I had focused on something, but at the same time I was aware of the entire space. Perception is transferred into intuitive thinking and I am not afraid anymore. The same is true in the dream experience. It can also be done in activities like touching a table. I can concentrate my attention on the sensations in my finger tips, but then I don’t feel the table.

LaBerge: Which is normally exactly the opposite.

Tholey: If I look like this, I’m not afraid, the fear is not in me, but I can see the danger outside of me. LaBerge: OK. Back to the mirror technique. So you lie in bed looking at the mirror above the bed until you feel yourself as if in the mirror, and then you shut your eyes.

Tholey: Yes, I shut my eyes and imagine my head in the mirror. The more I do this, the more my imagination becomes like perception. It becomes more and more real.

LaBerge: But if you have already seen yourself as in the image, it should be relatively easy for that image to be seen as real.

Tholey: Yes, that is why I do it. This technique has its origin in magic. This is a further development. This technique is described very well by Klaus Stich (1983; 1989).

LaBerge: Would this be a good technique to do in the morning or during an afternoon nap?

Tholey: Usually we did it during the afternoon nap or in the morning. But not at night. This technique will be described more precisely in one of the following issues of Bewusst Sein. [Editor’s Note: A journal published by the recently founded International Association for Consciousness Research and its Applications (CORA), the European counterpart of Lucidity Association; see the December, 1989 issue of Lucidity Letter for more details. The remainder of the conversation took place the next day.]

Effects of Destroying the Ego Core

LaBerge: I am familiar with your basic procedure—the idea of integration through facing threatening figures and resolving conflicts. Up to this point you have discussed splitting the dream body in pieces and abstracting the dream-ego point, and then you alluded to something, yesterday, about destroying the self, the ego point, the ego core. I would like to understand better exactly how this process is accomplished and how you understand the theoretical basis for it.

Tholey: This can be a very unpleasant or a very pleasant state. It can be very pleasant, when the “I” becomes one with the cosmos. Then there is one world, a cosmos, a phenomenal world, and the self belongs to that. By then, the I can’t be distinguished as a piece apart. Now our cosmos is one piece, identical with the self (I).

LaBerge: So what about the theory and practice?

Tholey: It can be done, for example, by immersing the ego-core or the dream-body in fire, the dream fire. This is nothing new. Some time ago I thought it was new, but something like this has been practiced by shamans, yet for us it was a new thing. This can be very unpleasant because it leads to a total dissolving of the I. On the one hand, the ego becomes inflated and, on the other hand, it disappears.

LaBerge: Yes, like in Tibetan dream yoga. Take the dream-body into the fire and the dream-body disappears. But there is still the ego-core.

Tholey: Sometimes it happens that you actually lose the ego-core completely. There is no point of view anymore from which to look or think. There is only seeing left; thinking without any difference between the object and the subject—no difference whatsoever between the object and the subject.

LaBerge: This sounds like a dream that I described in my book, a dream in which I decided that I wanted to experience the highest potential in me. I flew up into the clouds, without any other intention than that. My dream-body disappeared and yet I still existed, in a sense. I could sing, for example, although I had no mouth. Yet I had the sense of a unity with the space. There wasn’t an I there, yet there was still something I would call a perspective.

Tholey: In the state I am talking about, the perspective is gone. There is the state with one perspective and there is the state with two perspectives. This is hard to imagine in the waking state. There also is the state of seeing without a subject, without the ego-core and without seeing. There isn’t anybody who sings anymore, but something like a singing entity.

LaBerge: Yes, that was exactly the experience! Because, when I woke up and thought about what the words were I had been singing: “I praise Thee, oh Lord,” I thought—but there was no I—there was no Thee—Thee praised Thee, perhaps. So I think I know the state you are talking about. The way I got to that, you see, wasn’t by any action of the dream-body. It was instead deeper than the intellectual intention to transcend.

Tholey: There is no action by itself, so that there is nobody who acts, it is much rather acting. There is no way to express that in Western languages because there is always a subject and predicate—it is much rather a Doing, an Acting, like singing or whatever—no subject, no object.

LaBerge: That is the same state I am talking about, the space was an infinite emptiness, filled with potential. But, in any case, I am interested in the method. I’ve wondered and thought about the possible consequences of cutting the body in various fragments. Given both the fact that there are studies demonstrating that people with psychosomatic conditions, who have experienced trauma in their dreams, will have psychosomatic problems—and given our own studies on these relationships, I’m uncertain about the wisdom of this and I’d like to see what you think about it. There is an article by Harold Levitan in which he describes case-studies, for example, of someone being stabbed in the stomach in a dream who later developed an ulcer. Now, the question is, of course, could this be some sort of prodromic syndrome or could it be that the trauma in the dream could have had a physiological effect—just as we have found in our research: a strong relationship?

Tholey: We have a group of ten or twelve lucid dreamers in Frankfurt that meets every two weeks or so and do experiments just like this. These experiments lead very often to negative effects, like aggressions towards dream figures, cutting the body and fear. We know this fact very well. First of all, all the experiments we do are dangerous. We know about the danger. We are pioneers and we know that this is dangerous. Secondly, we believe that there is nothing more psychosomatic than dream experiments, not even imagination. We also believe that these experiments might lead to psychosomatic disorders. Therefore we have not yet published the experiments about burning in fire.

LaBerge: It seems there are probably some people that the technique is good for. Others I don’t know. In fact, for NightLight we are interested in techniques that we can offer to a broad audience.

Tholey: These are the techniques we are trying to check now, but there are many more techniques. We check and publish despite the knowledge that dangers will emerge. We have to know it first, though. If we don’t publish, somebody else will, like occultists and charlatans. Therefore it seems to me to be very important to take these border areas into account as well, because they aim for the essence, the inner part of the psyche. If it weren’t for that, they wouldn’t be dangerous.

LaBerge: Yes, and people fall into them anyway.

Mental Capabilities and Consciousness of Dream Characters

LaBerge: Another topic I wanted to ask you about is in this paper (Tholey, 1989). As I interpret it, you are describing the consciousness and abilities of dream characters observed during lucid dreaming. I find it a fascinating series of experiments and a very interesting set of questions about what mental capacities the other dream characters have.

Tholey: The dream figures are able to do more, if they are dreamt by experienced lucid dreamers and if some dream figures have already been investigated. But there are also some dream figures that are not capable of doing anything.

LaBerge: I would agree with that from my experience. Indeed, how dream characters act depends largely on my expectations.

Tholey: That’s wrong! I have had arguments with a colleague about that also. My hypothesis was that dream characters are quite skillful. The doctoral students who had been working on this topic all thought that they weren’t. They were extremely surprised. It can happen that the dream character sits and writes. Yet when I discussed this phenomenon with Krist (1981) and the others they all said that this was impossible. I could name hundreds of cases of unexpected occurrences.

LaBerge: Certainly, but I said largely. What I mean is that it is possible that if I find you as a dream character in my dream and I expect you to be sympathetic, you’ll be sympathetic and if I expect you to be hostile, you’ll be hostile. How dream characters act, not what they can do, is the result of one’s expectations.

Tholey: There are examples that dream figures say something that the dream ego cannot understand. I am thinking of the 3ZWG example.

Holzinger: This example was described in Tholey, (1989). The dream-ego sits facing a dream figure that is writing something on a paper. Reading it, the dream-ego recognized 3ZWG. In the waking state, the dreamer remembered that he had argued with his fiancee about renting a 3-room apartment (in German this would be called a 3 Zimmer WohnunG, therefore 3ZWG in a newspaper ad). So do you really claim that dream characters have something like a consciousness of their own?

LaBerge: That’s what the major claim of the paper is.

Tholey: I don’t want to approach this question from the standpoint of occultism or spiritism. My explanation is very much like split-brain theory.

LaBerge: Yes, but we have no evidence that split-brain patients have a consciousness on both sides of the brain. They only report one consciousness. We don’t know if there is a second consciousness. All we can see are motor responses that might indicate consciousness, but automatic systems are capable of motor responses, too.

Tholey: You will never be able to really prove that, because this is, as I have already mentioned, a metaphysical problem. But now there are our very precise and practical experiments that lead to the questions: do dream characters have their own perspectives, can they look from there; do they have their own access to memory, perception, thinking, productive thinking? Can they rhyme better than I can do it?

LaBerge: Sure, all of that, but none of that requires consciousness!

Tholey: But nothing that happens here proves that Stephen has a consciousness or that Brigitte has a consciousness. Any proof would be metaphysical. You can act exactly the same way as the dream figures, you have your own perspectives, you have your own memory, and your own thinking. Why should I claim that dream figures don’t have a consciousness and, at the same time, claim, that you have one?

LaBerge: Yes, but the answer is: I have a brain, you have a brain, we each have a brain! But dream figures have no brains, except one, the one of the dreamer!

Tholey: When I am in a lucid dream I can have all these talks that I have right now.

LaBerge: Sure, but this does not prove anything about consciousness. My conclusion from the information presented here is that dream characters can do wondrous things, but they cannot do cognitive tasks that specifically require consciousness.

Tholey: Phenomenologically it can happen that you look from two perspectives, from under the table and above the table. You cannot imagine that.

LaBerge: Let’s step back. How do you do mental arithmetic? How do you compute 5 times 5? The answer simply appears. It’s not conscious, it’s automatic. But when you have to do arithmetic that involves carrying a number, you store that number in consciousness. Consciousness can be viewed as a global work space (Baars, 1988). It is different from the automatic processors. There is only one area of consciousness, at least in ordinary experience.

Holzinger: It seems to me that there is a misunderstanding between the two of you about the definition of consciousness.

Tholey: I have given different definitions of consciousness in a German essay with the title “Consciousness”—”Bewusst sein.” I differentiated at first between a phenomenological and an epistemological definition and then I differentiated further, so that all together I arrived at twelve different definitions of consciousness!

LaBerge: OK. But we must be using it in a different sense.

Tholey: So, I mean, a machine is able to do arithmetic, a child is not able to do arithmetic. Still I would say, that the child has consciousness, the machine hasn’t.

LaBerge: That’s exactly my point. These examples do not prove consciousness! The fact that the mental arithmetic abilities of dream figures are limited suggests to me that other characters don’t have that global space in which we can hold a result while we continue the automatic processes of the computation.

Tholey: Yes, but the figures did complicated rhymes!6

LaBerge: Yes, but this also could be automatic. Rhymes spring to mind; we don’t know how to do it. It just happens!

Tholey: The figures have to store something in that work space also in order to form longer poems and rhymes. Those poems are sometimes as long as ten lines.

LaBerge: Think of Coleridge and the poem “Kubla Khan.” It all just came to him. There is no reason to think that language processes have to be consciously directed. People talk all the time without thinking! See, consciousness and conscious processes can do some things that unconscious ones cannot.

Consciousness is not as efficient. It is slow, but it is flexible. And it allows such calculations as 12 times 17. To do this, you have to store an intermediate result while you do another operation. And we do simple mental arithmetic automatically, as if we had a look-up table. The answer of 5 times 5 is right there. You don’t think about how to do it. You don’t do anything other than set the problem and the answer appears. But there are limits to the number of numbers you can hold in your mind. You can hold about seven, plus or minus two. There are numerical experiments indicating and demonstrating the limitations of conscious processing and the relative lack of limitations of unconscious processors.

Tholey: That’s a question of different definitions of consciousness, but if we would start with that it would take a lecture.

LaBerge: Let’s make a rhyme now and notice how it happens! We start with Goethe’s last words: “Licht, mehr Licht” and then rhyme . . . “Nichts als nichts!” Not exactly grammatical, but an idea. How did it happen? It just appeared.

Tholey: I know that. I also know that Stephen knows Goethe fairly well.

LaBerge: OK. So how can we conclude that dream characters have consciousness?

Tholey: I have never claimed that! I only claimed that you will never be able to prove it, as you will never be able to prove that another person in waking life has consciousness!

LaBerge: My impression was that you had concluded that dream characters have independent consciousness.

Tholey: I have to clarify that misunderstanding now. I have never claimed that dream figures have consciousness. But the idea of whether they have consciousness or not has led us to some interesting experiments. I could tell them to sing or to count and we could see if there are changes in the EEG recordings under these conditions. But even this would never prove that they have consciousness.

References

Baars, B.J. (1988). A cognitive theory of consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Krist, H. (1981). Empirische Studien über Klarträume. Unpublished diploma thesis. Universität Frankfurt am Main.

Nossack, B. (1989). Klarträume-wirklicher als die Wirklichkeit. Das neue Zeitalter, 40(4), 4–8.

Stich, K. (1983). Empirische Untersuchungen uber den Zusammmenhang zwischen Klar-traumtechniken und magischen Techniken. Unpublished diploma thesis. Universität Frankfurt am Main.

Stich, K. (1989). Hat die Wissenschaft noch von der Magie zu lernen? Bewusst Sein, 1(1), 67–80.

Tholey, P. (1989). Consciousness and abilities of dream characters during lucid dreaming. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 68, 567– 578.

# Part II: Lucidity and Related States

## Introduction

###### HARRY HUNT

Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada

One of the things that has made the study of lucid dreaming more insular than it needed to be is the tendency among enthusiasts and critics alike to treat lucid dreaming as totally unique and unparalleled. A major and contributing virtue of Lucidity Letter has been its editorial heeding of early reports from Oliver Fox and Celia Green that lucid dreaming is part of a continuum of transformations of consciousness occurring in settings broader than ordinary night dreaming. The following articles make clear that there is an overlap in both phenomenology and neuro-cognitive processes between the varieties of lucidity and prelucidity, on the one hand, and out-of-body experience, UFO abduction accounts, near death experience, meditation and mystical experience, on the other. It becomes more and more clear that lucid dreaming is one variant of a family of consciousness transformations open to the mind.

### Section A–1: Altered States — Near-Death Experiences

##### II.A-1.1 Dream Lucidity and Near-Death Experience: A Personal Report

###### JOHN WREN-LEWIS

Clovelly, New South Wales, Australia

Attempts to investigate correlations between the incidence of lucid dreaming and near-death experiences (NDEs) have so far been inconclusive (Lucidity Letter, Vol. 1, Nos. 2 and 3, 1982). The following are some observations following my own NDE in November, 1983, which suggests a new approach. My NDE itself, which I have described elsewhere (Wren-Lewis, 1985), lacked almost all the dramatic features emphasized in the now voluminous literature on the subject (Lundahl, 1982). I had no “out-of-body” vision of myself in the hospital bed, no review of my life, no experience of hurtling through a tunnel towards a heavenly landscape and no encounter with supernatural figures urging me to return to bodily existence. I simply dissolved into an apparently spaceless and timeless void which was total “no-thing-ness” yet at the same time the most intense, blissful aliveness I have ever known. The after-effects of the experience, however, were dramatic indeed, and I have found no account of anything comparable in the NDE literature. I have been left with a change of consciousness so palpable that in the early days I kept putting my hand up to the back of my head, feeling for all the world as if the doctors had removed the top of my skull and exposed my brain to the infinite darkness of space. In fact the Living Void is still with me as a kind of background to my consciousness. The effect is that I experience everything, including this sixty-year-old body-mind, as a continuous outpouring of Being, wherein every part is simultaneously the whole, manifesting afresh moment by moment from that infinite Dark. As “John” I seem to have no separate existence, but am simply the Void knowing itself in mani-festation, and in that process of continuous creation everything seems to celebrate coming into being with a shout of joy—”Behold, it is very good!” Yet the exper-ience is in no sense a high, for its feeling-tone is one of gentle equanimity. My impression is rather that I am now knowing the true ordinariness of everything for the first time, and that what I used to call normal consciousness was in fact clouded.
I still slip back into that old clouded state frequently, but this is not a process of “coming down.” What happens is something I would have found unbelievable had I heard of it second-hand—namely, I again and again simply forget about the pearl of great price. I drift off into all kinds of preoccupations, mostly trivial, and become my old self, cut off from the Void-Background. Then, after a while, there begins to dawn on me a sense of something missing, at which point I recall the Void and usu-ally click back into the new consciousness almost immediately, with no effort at all.
I think this is what is meant by the mystical notion that so-called normal human life is really a state of chronic forgetfulness of “who we really are,” and I suppose my NDE must somehow have shocked me into recognizing my identity with the Void, with the result that my forgetfulness is now spasmodic rather than chronic. Needless to say, I was bowled over by all this at first, and spent many weeks coming to terms with it. I soon found that the new consciousness did not seem to demand any drastic changes oflife-style. In keeping with its sense of utter ordinariness, I remained recognizably John, and neither my tendency to drift out of the new consciousness nor my ability to click back into it seemed affected in any way by variations in diet, environment, or activities such as meditation.

Changes in Dreaming Patterns

One change that did impress me, however, was that to begin with my sleep seemed to become quite dreamless. Hitherto I had always been a big dreamer. In fact I seemed no longer to experience sleep as unconsciousness, but rather as with-drawal into something like the pure void-state of the original NDE. Then, after about two weeks, I woke one morning with a dream, and was very disappointed to find it a rather “boring” scenario totally lacking in mystical consciousness. My disappoint-ment grew as this experience was repeated several times over the following weeks, and I wondered if it meant my new consciousness was somehow superficial, doomed to fade before long. In fact, however, the consciousness remained undiminished in waking hours and at sleep onset; with a scientist’s hankering after quantification, I estimated that I stayed in it between 30% and 50% of my waking time.
The explanation of its absence from dreams became apparent as soon as I put aside disappointment and resumed regular dream-work, using the approach devel-oped by my wife, Dr. Ann Faraday (Faraday, 1973; 1976). I found that my dreams now, just as in my pre-NDE life, were working over, in their own distinctive dramatic-symbolic mode, various specific unresolved concerns of the day—and I immediately recognized these as the very preoccupations that had obscured mystical consciousness during my “drifts into forgetfulness.” In fact my disappointment came from not taking our own dream theory seriously enough.
In the Faraday view, most dreams—even happy, creative, numinous, archetypal and transpersonal ones—derive from waking concerns requiring further attention, mainly thoughts, feelings or subliminal vibes passed over during the day because we were either too busy or unwilling to examine them. The essence of my mystical consciousness, on the other hand, is that each moment is enjoyed with full feeling-attention—not because I stop thinking or imagining, but because I am coming from a state of complete satisfaction with whatever is in the moment, irrespective of what has to be completed along the line of time. The clouds descend when consciousness gets caught up in some concern, high or low, and forgets its identity with the Void-Ground —and normal dreaming, in which the self is completely involved in whatever dream-drama is going on, is an exact reflection of this state of preoccupied forgetfulness.
Realizing this, I understood why many mystics have referred to unenlightened human life as a kind of waking dream. I also recalled the claim often made by J. Krishnamurti that he had “no need to dream” because he completes each waking moment in fully satisfied feeling-attention. He awakens each morning, he says, to a world completely new and fresh, having spent the night in a state beyond both dream and dreamlessness—perhaps the same state which Tibetan yoga describes as transcending the state between sleep and waking (Chang, 1963). Could this have been what I experienced in the first two weeks after the NDE?

What About Lucidity?

I remained very puzzled, however, about where lucid dreams fit into this picture, and tried several experiments to induce them by pre-sleep suggestion, without suc-cess. And then, at Easter 1984, I got my answer, and also my first dream that did include mystical consciousness, through an entirely unforeseencircumstance.
The occasion was a dinner party in Sydney at which my host continued unob-trusively to fill my glass with superb Australian wine to the point where I had drunk more than is my custom. All my Puritan Christian conditioning, reinforced by my studies in Eastern mysticism since the NDE, closed in on me with the fear that I might have sabotaged my mystical consciousness. In actual fact I could not detect any clouding at all—the party, and the streets on the way home after, were full of the usual blissful “Isness.” But my worrying Topdog voices wouldn’t be shaken off, and I went to bed half convinced that I would wake next day to find I had betrayed my gift of grace, dissolved the pearl of great price in a mess of alcohol. Instead, I had the most remarkable dream of my life. Since it occupies seven pages of my dream diary, I can only give a bare summary here. It began as an ordinary dream.
I was wandering around Sydney and gradually becoming aware that most people couldn’t see me because I was dead. Of the few who could, one was Ann, and another the real-life President of the Australian Institute for Psychical Research, Eric Wedell. He seemed to have a special responsibility for instructing me in how to handle this strange post-mortem existence, and when he mentioned wine I suddenly became lucid. I knew this was a dream, in which my ghostly invisibility symbolized my post-NDE state and the dream-characters who could see me were the people who in waking life recognized that I was living in heaven here on earth, dead to “this world.” I also knew I was creating this dream to explore my concern about drink and mystical consciousness, and I became aware of lying in bed in our apartment overlooking Sydney Harbor Bridge with my mouth dry from mild alcoholic dehydration.
Still in the dream, I recalled the discussion in Lucidity Letter following Charles Tart’s proposal (Tart, 1984) to restrict the term “lucid” to dreams in which there is full rational consciousness, including awareness of lying in a particular bed asleep. I thought to myself, ‘Well, here’s one for you Charlie!’, and continued with the dream, main-taining simultaneous consciousness of lying in bed in one room while talking to Eric in a quite different dream-room. I asked him outright what were the heavenly rules about drinking, to which he replied that “here,” drink just wasn’t available for people likely to abuse it—and wouldn’t I like to try this new vintage? With a flash I saw that the real threat to my mystical consciousness lay not in drink itself but in getting caught up into an internal dialogue about drink, and to celebrate this “break” in dream-terms, I walked straight through the wall of the dream-room.
As I emerged into the street by the harbor my dream was flooded with mystical consciousness, not as something new, but as a simple recognition of what had actually been there all along, the exact same sense I have when I click back into the conscious-ness in waking life. I flew over the water, borne by a wind I knew to be the breath of God on creation’s first morning, and fainted at the beauty of it all—to wake in bed, my eyes brimming with tears of gratitude.
The gratitude has returned many times since, for I have used the insight again and again in waking life to break out of internal Topdog/Underdog dialogues (of many different kinds) and click back into mystical consciousness far sooner than I would otherwise have done. Largely thanks to this particular piece of dream-work, I am now enjoying the mystical state for well over half of most days, sometimes muchmore, and this has been accompanied by some quite astonishing effects—for example, an ability to take even quite unpleasant experiences like pain into the consciousness and find them, too, “very good” as I have described elsewhere (Wren-Lewis, 1985).
For the record here, I must state that I have not noticed any decrease in my dreaming, but this is no surprise. Dreams deal with specific unresolved concerns, any one of which can sometimes be worked over by several dreams of the same night, so even a small amount of time caught up in preoccupation during the day could still generate as much “need to dream” as a whole day of clouding. The “Krishnamurti phenomenon,” if it occurs, would represent a quantum jump to com-plete dreamlessness when daily drifting into preoccupation is reduced to zero, and I am a long way from that yet.

Interpreting Lucid Dreams

Meantime, my main concern here is to report what I have learned from all this about lucid dreaming, and once again I must necessarily resort to summary. My dream described above completely confirms Faraday’s view (Faraday, 1976) that the contents of lucid dreams, including breakthroughs, flying and even the act of “awakening” to lucidity, can be interpreted in the same way as the contents of nonlucid dreams. Faraday links varying degrees of self-reflection or lucidity in dreaming to occasions of comparable “awakening” during the day, when we catch our-selves out (albeit only partially or fleetingly) getting lost in some internal drama of our own making. In my case, the fleeting moment of waking lucidity must have occurred on the drive home from the party, when I looked around the Sydney streets and found them still full of blissful “Isness,” despite my Topdog trying to persuade me otherwise. The dream very clearly portrayed mystical consciousness as beyond the “awakening” to lucidity. Following the logic of a Faraday interpretation, I see this as a reflection of the fact that mystical consciousness includes but goes beyond psy-chological “awakening” to one’s internal dramas. This jibes with Ken Wilber’s repeated insistence (Wilber, 1981; 1983) that psychotherapy and human potential work can never themselves bring fulfillment or liberation, which is transpersonal, though they provide an essential foundation for it. In Wilber’s paradigm, mystical consciousness is presented as a separate stage of development, requiring yogic or Zen techniques, after psychological self-awareness has been attained; in my case, having been catapulted into mystical consciousness by the shock of the NDE, I now find myself having to use the self-therapy of dream-work to claim fully what I already have much of the time. Because my NDE has given me this foothold beyond psychological self-awareness, I would expect, on Faraday principles, to have fewer spontaneous lucid dreams than I did before, since any time I catch myself out in an internal drama during the day I normally click straight back into mystical consciousness with no opportunity for the self-awareness to become an unfinished concern. I think lucid dreams are likely to arise for me now only in rather special circumstances like the Easter party, and so far I have had no further instances. For anyone without a mystical foothold beyond psychological self-awareness, on the other hand, I would expect the practice of regular dream-work of other human potential disciplines to be accompanied by an increase in all the stages of lucidity in dreams, just as Faraday reports (Faraday, 1976; 1978).
I suspect that my Archimedean foothold beyond self-awareness was also in some way responsible for the fact that my Easter 1984 dream gave me full “Tart-style” lucidity for the first time in my life, though the precise logic of this is not yet clear to me. I think Tart is wise to emphasize (Tart, 1984) that there could be some-thing like a difference of kind, rather than merely of degree, between knowing clearly in a dream that one is its author and actually being aware of sleeping in bed and of dreaming simultaneously.
While the former would seem, on Faraday’s prin-ciple, to reflect some unacknowledged moment of self-awareness during the day, Tart’s lucidity seems to imply a state of consciousness transcending the distinction between sleep and waking, as envisaged in Tibetan dream yoga. I should therefore be extremely interested to know if Tart or anyone else who has experienced what he wants to call lucidity in dreams has ever done it spontaneously, or whether it is the result of some special exercise, as would be expected on Wilber’s paradigm.
In the light of all the above I would expect no simple correlation between NDEs and the incidence of lucid dreaming. There might even be a negative correlation if NDEs regularly produced mystical consciousness with full feeling-attention and complete satisfaction in each waking moment. Most NDEs, however, seem only to produce conversion-experiences, which, if they involve an impulse towards greater self-awareness, might bring an increase in lucid dreaming according to Faraday’s paradigm.

References

Chang, G. (1963). Teachings of Tibetan yoga. New York: University Books.

Faraday, A. (1973). Dream power. New York: Berkeley Books.

Faraday, A. (1976). The dream game. New York: Harper & Row (Perennial Library).

Faraday, A. (1978). Once upon a dream. Voices (Spring).

Lundahl, C.R. (Ed.) (1982). A collection of near-death findings. Chicago: Nelson-Hall. Tart, C. (1984). Terminology in lucid dream research. Lucidity Letter, 3(1), 4–6. Wilber, K. (1981). No boundary. Los Angeles: Shambhala.

Wilber, K. (1983). Eye to eye. Garden City, New York: Doubleday/Anchor.

Wren-Lewis, J. (1985). The darkness of God. Bulletin of the Australian Institute for Psychical Research, No. 5.

##### II.A-1.2 Near Death, Near Dream

GEORGE GILLESPIE

University of Pennsylvania

I will describe here an experience of mine which was in all its characteristics a near-death experience (NDE) except that ultimately there was no evidence that I had been near death, and which, except for my believing I had died, was similar to a number of earlier experiences of mine which had always occurred only in context of lucid dreams, that is dreams in which I know I am dreaming.
I have been a frequent lucid dreamer since 1976 and have experienced many “out-of-body” (OBEs) both in the context of lucid dreams and between dreaming and awakening, though never with verification that I had left the body. Before this “NDE,” if I may call it such, I had experienced a number of times a brilliant light in which I felt God was present. This has always been in continuity from ordinary lucid dreaming, and has occasionally grown out of an experience of darkness (see Gillespie, 1985).
At least six years before my “NDE” I had read some excerpts from Moody’s Life after Life. Otherwise, I had not read much about NDEs, although I was familiar with Tibetan material on death experience. My “NDE” happened in the early morning of February 18, 1985 in Calcutta. I wrote it down immediately afterward.
In an ordinary dream I was explaining to some people about death. Our interest was not simply theoretical, but related to real possibilities. I said, “You will see both darkness and light at the same time,” meaning they would pass out of darkness into light.
After a transition that I don’t remember, I was floating in darkness wondering what was happening to me. I was going through some personal crisis I did not understand. Though I was not particularly aware of my (dreamed) body, I felt myself drift up. Suddenly I entered the light, which I happily recognized. I knew then that I was again in the presence of God, and that this time I had died. The light was brilliant and filled my vision. There was a point above the level of my eyes from which the light appeared to radiate.
I did not remember waking life, nor did I know the circumstances of my death. I had some regrets at first, but my joy was greater than any regrets. I was spontaneously prayerful, calm and extremely happy. As I floated for some time in the light I repeated over and over with great feeling, “Thank you, Father.” I was not thankful for dying, but for being in the presence of God and the light.
Then slowly I became aware that I was in bed. I woke up tingling and very much surprised to find that I had not died.
My “NDE” did not, to my knowledge, have a physiological base, nor an obvious psychological precipitant. The experience did continue the themes of death, darkness and light of the preceding ordinary dream. A possible factor is that a close friend died a few days later in the United States. I knew he had been in serious condition for some months, but being in India I did not know that he was close to death at the time.
The characteristics of my experience that are common to NDE accounts are: the feeling of crisis, floating up as in an OBE, passage through darkness, entry into a brilliant light, awareness of having died, consciousness of a presence in the light—in my case God, devotion, extreme joy, and resignation tohaving died. It was all very real to me and even upon waking reflection, very convincing. All these elements I had experienced before in continuity from ordinary lucid dreaming, except the feeling of crisis and the “knowledge” that I had died. This knowledge came to me as a knowledge comes in dreams—I simply “knew it, as in an ordinary dream I may “know” I am in Hong Kong without any evidence in the dream environment. In a similar manner a near-death experiencer may “know” that she is dead, “know” that something good waits for her at the end of the tunnel, or “know” that the presence wants her to return to life (see Lundahl, 1982).
The experience of “dying,” in continuity from an ordinary dream, contained elements of NDE, OBE, and mystical phenomena, while duplicating previous lucid dream-related experiences. It was not like an ordinary dream, nor like an ordinary lucid dream. But I find lucid dreams OBEs, mystical phenomena, and NDEs to be in a continuum with dream experience, and to be experienced as dreams are experienced. When happening in the context of dreams, as lucid dreams do and OBEs sometimes do the connection with dreaming is more apparent. When happening apart from dreams, as mystical phenomena, NDEs, and OBEs usually do, the connection with dreams is not obvious. All these experiences have a commonality in that each is a kind of awareness-that-not-awake (ANA, can I say?) that is distin-guished from ordinary dreaming. While the lucid dreamer generally accepts the unreality of what is being experienced, those who experience OBEs, mystical phe-nomena, and NDEs generally accept the experience as really happening.
To see these experiences as dream-related or as in continuity from dreaming only partially explains them. There is a lot that we do not know about dreams, and these phenomena all have elements that take them decidedly beyond ordinary dreaming.

References

Gillespie, G. (1985). Ordinary dreams, lucid dreams and mystical experience. A paper pre-sented at the annual Lucid Dream Preconvention Symposium at the international con-ference of the Association for the Study of Dreams, Charlottesville, Virginia (June).

Lundahl, C.R. (Ed.) (1982). A collection of near-death research readings. Chicago: Nelson Hall.

##### II.A-1.3 CODE BLUE: A New Beginning

###### MARK BLOCK

Fort Dodge, Iowa

My story begins on the warm, star-lit night of August 3, 1986—a night destined to stand alone from all the others that preceded it as suddenly it became isolated in time. The night was calm and tranquil, yet it held within it the power to change my life forever.
Prior to this time, during my college years, I had begun a period of my life in which I progressively abandoned everything that had previously served to structure my life and instill it with direction and purpose. I found myself wandering aimlessly through those years as I desperately sought to regain the direction and contentment I had once known. I became more dissatisfied with my life as I drifted from one interest to another, draining the excitement and enthusiasm from each before moving on to the next. I exhausted my options one by one as I closed door after door behind me, each taking me one phase farther away from my true self. I felt lost, no longer knowing who I was or where to turn, as I prayed for an answer that would turn my life around and once again structure it with the proper meaning I was then missing.
On the night of August 3, I had just arrived home after withdrawing from the summer-school term at the University of Northern Iowa and was without the use of a car. My father lent me his for the evening: a two-door Toyota sports car which was smaller and lighter than what I was accustomed to driving. My long-time friend John and I, who was just married the previous month, had spent the evening together cooking hamburgers on the grill and watching movies on television. Having reached some decisions about how I planned to turn my life around, we discussed what was to happen over the course of the next few days as I prepared to join the service. I was no longer in school and had completed all preliminary requirements after I had enlisted and had only to have a physical examination the next day, at which time I would be flown away to begin my training. As the evening passed, I began to express some reluctance and uncertainty about my decision to leave school. We decided to continue our conversation while we relaxed in my car and drove in the country.
Shortly before 2:00 a.m. we turned down a large hill behind my house leading us out into the countryside on the River Road, so called because of the way in which it paralleled the Des Moines River which passed through Fort Dodge, where I was raised. It was a road that I knew well (perhaps too well) from the countless miles that I had spent on it training for my hobby and talent, which was running.
As we drove on, still less than one mile from my home, I commented on how peaceful and calm it was overlooking the river below with the stars shining in the sky above and the airport lights glistening in the distance as they broke through the shroud of darkness which blanketed the horizon. The night seemed unusually dark and still as the darkness enveloped the road, encompassing everything within it and smothering all movement and sound. As we continued our descent down the hill into the darkness, which would serve as an ominous reminder of that night, my friend turned to me and acknowledged a strange feeling that came over him and in turn reached across and locked his seat belt into its fastened position. I felt that same feeling as shivers tingled up my back, chilling my body while I reached across and pulledmy seat belt toward its fastened position, but then hesitated and released it back to its resting position. As we continued on, still less than one mile from my house, we approached a curve in the road which had recently been resurfaced after sliding into the river far below during a rainstorm. I braked and slowed as we approached the turn, but suddenly the car was jolted as we crossed a dip in the road which separated the old from the new pavement. The impact caused the car to sway from side to side offsetting our momentum, and the car was forced to the right. It was as though we were sliding on ice as the front wheels of the car hit the shoulder, causing us to fishtail back across the road. The car then veered to a cliff on the left, where a guard rail outlined the edge of the road separating it from the drop to the river below. I was able to avoid striking the guard rail, but was sent skidding back again to the right.
Everything became a blur as I saw the guard rail and reflectors go flying by. The headlights illuminated so clearly the many reflectors that outlined the road, each like a conductor’s lantern swaying back and forth in the night radiating the most brilliant and distinctive light. The brightness of the car’s lights turned the shroud of darkness into the crisp whiteness of day, encompassed in a strange heavenly radiance. The trees sketched within the headlights came to life as they danced grotesquely back and forth ahead of me like puppets on a string. I felt as though I was witnessing the many toys of a toy shop come to life to torment and mesmer [sic] me as they mesmerized me with their play. I became dizzy and fearful as I swelled with nausea, as though I was on some type of sickening and demented carnival ride, but this ride would take me where no carnival ride had before. Was this the “point of no return”? Seconds seemed like minutes as my stomach sickened with nausea and dread. Would we ever stop?
The stars in the sky above blurred through the windshield as they spun round and round like a swarm of fireflies swirling around their nest. Everything seemed to stand still as that small fragment of time became so vivid and suspended. The song playing on the radio faded away as I became lost in the stars as they danced through the windshield intriguing me with their enchanting serenade, as if calling me to come dance with them. No longer did they seem so distant in the sky as they swirled around me seemingly within my grasp. The speedometer, which was violently thrashing back and forth within its confinement, struggling to free itself, was then frozen as if captured within a picture. The fluorescence of the dashboard lights became three-dimensional as they flared with radiance but suddenly subsided, like a bonfire when doused with gasoline. The landscape was still as if frozen and no longer seemed real. I could no longer feel my hands against the steering wheel as my body seemed to go numb. I could no longer feel the seat and I felt separate from my body. I felt airy and lightheaded as I rose out of my seat and looked down upon my hands which were frozen with terror as they clutched at the steering wheel, causing the tendons to protrude with tension. I felt as though I had disappeared as the stars carried me away to their heavenly playground far above and left my body frozen with strain and terror within the car. It seemed so peaceful as I floated away and became lost within the stars.
That was the last I was to remember of that night for quite some time. I didn’t remember the car being thrown from the road into the ditch and against an embankment. I didn’t remember the car nosing into a culvert as it buckled the car. I didn’t remember the sound of glass breaking and metal being torn as the car slammed into a tree during midroll. I didn’t remember my ear being ripped away as my head collided with the windshield. Nor did I remember the sound of my neck as it snapped under the weight of the car like that of a twig under foot.
The car came to rest on its top, pinned between two trees, with John and I trapped and unconscious beneath its weight. Approximately forty minutes lapsed before John became conscious and oriented.
Trapped beneath the twisted wreckage, he panicked to free himself but was unable to open the door which was pinned shut by a tree. Eventually, despite the limited space due to the flattened and smashed roof, he was able to crawl through a shattered window. He was still very disoriented, but managed to reach a nearby farmhouse and get help.
Having difficulty locating the car as it lay hidden within the woods, the authorities began their search for me upon arrival. Soon after they began their search, John became more oriented and remembered the location of the car.
Help appeared beyond use for me as the Webster County Sheriff found the car at 3:15 with me unconscious inside. Upon arrival, the sheriff reached his hand inside the car, but was unable to register my pulse. Apparently absent of vital signs, the proper medical authorities were notified of my fatality and called to the scene. The paramedics and Fort Dodge fire department soon arrived, followed by the Webster County Coroner, but were unable to reach me in the car. As they began their struggle to reach me and resuscitate me, the Jaws of Life were used to force open several parts of the car to allow the paramedics and coroner to crawl inside and help me. At that time my vital signs were still absent, but after several resuscitation attempts my pulse was registered. I was left within the car until my condition warranted safe extraction. After my pulse stabilized and my injuries were protected and my neck secured, I was removed from the car and taken to a nearby hospital where the staff struggled to keep me alive. Both John and I were taken to Trinity Regional Hospital in Fort Dodge and our parents were notified. Mine, however, received different news than did John’s. John was being treated and held for numerous body lacerations, a concussion, facial and head lacerations, and several cracked ribs. It was evident, however, that my needs could not be met there. The main interest at that time was to perform life-sustaining measures. The hospital staff then faced a critical decision. Could they risk transporting me to the care I was in need of?
Iowa Methodist Medical Center (IMMC) in Des Moines received notification of my condition and dispatched the Life Flight helicopter en route to Trinity Regional Hospital where I awaited its arrival. My survival then became a test of time. Would I survive long enough for the arrival of the helicopter? Would I survive the trip to Des Moines? I was still within the “golden hour,” those first minutes that would determine whether I would live.
By the time my parents had arrived at the hospital, I had already begun my journey to IMMC in Des Moines where emergency and trauma room staff were put on standby awaiting my arrival. It was crucial to my survival that I make it to Des Moines before such processes as spinal shock (trauma and shock to my spinal cord due to spinal cord damage) and brain trauma (trauma and shock to my brain due to a closed head injury) began to set in. These processes cause swelling and can cause life-sustaining functions to cease working. The Life Flight crew, qualified as they were, were not prepared and set up to handle such things as this. They would be in need of more qualified equipment than was found on the helicopter.
As my parents continued their long and agonizing travel to Des Moines, still not knowing much of what to expect, I completed my life-determining journey as my conditioned yet worsened. By the time they arrived in Des Moines, spinal shock and head trauma had set in. My spinal cord and brain began to swell, which caused my respiratory system to shut down. At that time, I was put on a life support respirator system which did my breathing for me, and thus maintained my vital signs—my life was being sustained by mechanical and artificial means of respiration.
My condition was such that any surgery to relieve the pressure upon my spinal cord was not possible, but was necessary. I was far from being stable enough to undergo any such surgery. The doctors then had to wait for my condition to improve.
Then, breathing with aid of the respirator, other minor injuries sustained in the accident became the major focus. While being thrown within the car, my head collided with the broken windshield which buckled inward when the roof was flattened. I sustained a severe laceration on the right side of my head, beginning at my temple continuing back and down through my ear. This left a great deal of glass embedded in my skull and my ear almost totally severed and avulsed (torn and ripped off). Plastic and reconstructive surgery were later performed on both as well as other various cuts to my forehead. During the impact of my chest with the steering wheel, my lungs sustained slight damage (contusions and crushing). Such things as broken toes, sprained fingers, and various stresses placed on my joints were left alone. Until I could undergo further testing such as X-rays and CAT scans, much of these would go undetected.
Soon following, I underwent the CAT scans and X-rays which revealed that I had sustained a fracture and dislocation of my third and fourth cervical vertebrae (C3-4 FxD), and a closed head injury (CHI) type of brain damage along with various types of lung and soft tissue damage. Until I grew stable enough to undergo surgery, there was no way to know exactly to what extent my spinal cord had been injured. The doctors did know, however, that I was “incomplete” (meaning the spinal cord was not totally severed) because with my level of injury, which was very high and very compound, had I been “complete” (spinal cord totally severed) I would have been dead instantly. Yet, there was no way of knowing what the extent of the brain damage and paralysis would be.
I was placed in an intensive care unit (ICU) under close supervision and put in cervical traction. I was still dependent upon artificial respiration. Holes were drilled on either side of my head just behind and below both temples. These holes were to accommodate the “Angel Tongs” which were then screwed into both holes. These tongs resembled ice-tong calipers and were attached to the bed by a spring-cable device with twelve pounds of traction weights. They resisted any movement and pulled my head away from my body in order to align and secure my damaged neck. I was placed on a kinetic bed which molded around my body much like a ginger-bread man cookie cutout. I lay within this cutout while the kinetic bed rotated from side to side. This bed completed one turn every five minutes and could be stopped for caring needs. The reason for the rotation was to aid circulation and prevent decubitus ulcers (bed sores) on my pressure points. Nasogastric (NG) tubes were inserted into my stomach through my nose from which I would receive liquid nourishment. Endotracheal (ET) tubes were inserted into my lungs through my nose and throat so that I could be ventilated and my lungs, which were then filling with fluids and phlegm, could be suctioned out. Intravenous (IV) tubes were inserted into my arms to help keep me hydrated and to maintain a fluid balance as well as to allow administration of medication. As the hours passed and I continued my struggle to hold on, my condition continued to worsen and I went into a deep comatose state. At that time, the neurologists advised my ever confused and agonized parents that if I survived I would be quadriplegic, and it was quite likely that I would be restricted to bed and be respirator dependent for the rest of my life.
While to the world I was initially in a coma, I can find no words to sufficiently express the beauty and magnificence of what I was to experience during the next weeks. Any attempt to capture or convey the experience in words serve only to fall short. What I was to experience was something beyond this worldand cannot adequately be described in worldly terms. I was to encounter the most mysterious yet peaceful occurrence of feelings and sensations which continue to overwhelm me and influence my life with contentment, love, and joy.
Having no remembrance of the night of the accident and the events which were to follow, I awoke within myself seemingly suspended in the midst of a dark void to encounter the most shocking combination of pain and confusion. I felt lost within a nightmare as I struggled to awaken and free myself from the grasp of this horrifying dream. I felt as though my eyelids had been sewn shut as I struggled to open my eyes but could not. I was aware of the radiant glow of the lights external to my body as they passed though my eyelids far above me, like that of the sun as it pierces the eyelids of sunbathers on a beach. I looked above from down within myself and saw the holes where my eyes were; they seemed like keyholes in a door as the light radiated through them like a movie projector with its stream of light piercing the darkness of a theater.
Feeling trapped beneath a blanket of ice with the current carrying me helplessly downstream, I panicked to reach the surface but could not oppose the current’s powerful but gentle flow. I feared that surely I would suffocate if I did not reach the surface to breathe. I continued to be pulled away into this nightmare by the steady stream beneath the ice, like an astronaut severed from the life-sustaining ship, floating eternally into the nothingness of space. Filled with terror, I struggled to resist as I waited for someone to awaken me before I had drifted too far away to return. I was filled with horror as I could not awaken from this dream. As I panicked to free myself, I thought of my family. How simple it would be for then to awaken me, but I could not call to them through this nightmare which isolated me from them. Soon the pain overcame my horror and confusion as it continued to grow more agonizing and unbearable. I sought desperately to awaken and free myself from its excruciating sting, but could not. As the pain continued to grow and overcome my confusion and I realized the futility of my struggle to awaken, I sought to escape the pain by seeking shelter deep within my body. No longer did I resist the pull of the current as I ceased my struggle and allowed the current to carry me away deep within my body to safety.
As I sought to shelter from the pain and drifted deeper within my body to escape, I felt as though my physical mind and body knew instinctively what to do while they pushed my inner “self” to safety and endured the pain and confusion for me. Like an electrical fuse box, my body released its protective circuit breaker when overwhelmed by the pain too powerful to endure safely. When my body was confronted with the painful overload caused by my injuries, its protective circuit breaker prevented further damage to the inner “self,” the core of my “being.” My physical body was the autopilot as my inner self bailed out to safety, avoiding the pain which was too overwhelming to endure. Like a bomber pilot jumping to safety with a parachute just before the maimed airplane came crashing to the ground, I jumped to safety as well. As a person who seeks shelter within the security of a fruit cellar beneath a basement floor during a storm, so did I seek shelter far down within my body. Once there, I closed the door behind me and sat huddled within its safety in darkness and silence waiting for the storm to pass. My empty body around me became a hollow shell from which I hung suspended in weightlessness in the middle, like a large abandoned airplane hanger: hollow and dark.
Then safe within the security of the current, my journey downward within my body became a series of shelters where I rested and sought refuge within its safety. There I waited and gathered strength, until the pain lingering ominously behind which I had crawled deep within my body to escape, caught up with meand penetrated the walls of my shelter, forcing me to go deeper within my body seeking the next shelter. There again, I waited and gathered strength until the pain caught up with me forcing me to go deeper yet to elude it. This journey downward was like that of a soldier in a war, retreating from the chaos of the front lines to avoid the torrents of bombshells raining down upon him, threatening his life, and seeking shelter within one foxhole and another, hesitating within one before moving on to the next, progressively getting farther from danger and closer to safety. This journey was like a pedestrian running from one doorway to another during a rainstorm, getting closer and closer to the warmth of home.
Then, passive, I felt a gentle current overcome me with its flow, as it carried me away within its security. No longer did I resist its pull, and I wondered to where I was drifting. No longer did I feel the urgency to breathe, and I realized that it was not necessary. No longer did I feel the panic to awaken or struggle or resist the flow. No longer did I experience the pain and uncontrollable nightmares and feelings that came with them. No longer did I sense the movement of my physical body around me or the uncontrollable gagging, and the choking noises I had previously identified as being my own had ceased. The degree to which I had previously struggled to resist, I then desired to go on in search of an answer to my questions of what was happening to me. I looked far above to the surface, and I saw the light which passed through my eyelids slowly fade away. I felt the security of a young child cradled in its mother’s arms as the warmth of the current encompassed me within its safety.
Still safe within the pull of the current as it carried me to safety deep within my body, I attempted to rationalize what was happening to me. I did not know where I was, how I had gotten there, or where I was going, but somehow found great safety and security. I could not explain the unbearable pain I had previously felt and struggled to escape, or the gentle isolation of the blackness which surrounded me. I could not comprehend why it was not necessary for me to breathe and why I did not suffocate as earlier I had feared. I soon thought that I was home in bed and deep asleep, but I had no remembrance of this and I could not explain how I could be “awake” and talking and thinking and yet asleep at the same time. Was this a dream? If so, why was I unable to awaken from the grasp of this nightmare? When would I awaken? I found no justifiable answer to my questions and soon came to the worst of all possible explanations. Was I dead? If so, why was I talking to myself and why could I feel pain? I thought of my family and friends and of their sadness. I had left without saying goodbye. I felt sorrow for the many things I had not yet done while alive. The pain that I had gone deep inside myself to escape caught up with me and again I was forced to go deeper yet within myself to escape it.
When I reached my last and final shelter, I felt as though I could go no deeper as I locked the door behind me and waited within the security of my refuge. Somehow I “knew” that there I would remain and had reached the end of my journey. This last refuge became a fortress different than those before it. It seemed more calm and tranquil there than that of my previous shelters. The pain which I had desperately sought to elude was never able to penetrate the walls of this refuge as it had been able to before. I left all contacts with my physical body far behind and above me where they would remain. There I left all physical ties behind, leaving only my inner “self,” the core of my “being,” then separated from the external world far above and outside the new world of my “self.” Before I entered this refuge, which was a fortress stronger than those before it, I shed all contacts with my physical body, leaving only my inner “self” to pass through the walls of this fortress. My pain remained tied to my physical body, which was unable to pass through the walls of this fortress. The pain remained like a fierce dog leashed to a tree outside my fortress, unable to deliver its bite. I shed my pain before entering this fortress like a workman removing his soiled boots on the doorstep before entering the cleanliness of home. This refuge was a barrier protecting me from the pain which lingered outside its walls. Somehow, I “knew” that there Iwould be safe and would remain to ride out the storm. My previous feelings of fear, confusion, and pain dissipated into feelings of peace, tranquility, and safety like I had never known before. Moreover, despite the absolute silence of this refuge I was able to “hear” the sounds to be heard, yet I could “hear” the many feelings that emanated within my refuge. I became “aware” of the absolute darkness yet was never blinded by it nor did it hinder my vision. There was nothing to see, yet I could “see” like never before. There I remained “alive” and was never lonely as something, someone, somehow instilled me with safety and well-being. I grew content with the feelings of peace and tranquility that surrounded me. “Warmth” radiated within my refuge and there I had no answers to my questions, but yet I had no questions either. While there, I lost touch with all constructs of time and order. I did not grow tired or hungry. All physical needs and drives were left behind, leaving the mental “self” separated from the world far above and outside the new world of my “self.” I had no rationalization of where I was nor how I got there, but somehow found a great deal of security and safety. What I was experiencing was like a dream but without mental illusion: everything seemed real and conscious but nothing like I had ever experienced. I did not know where I was or what was happening to me, but I no longer cared as all my questions disappeared. I did know, however, that I was safe and there I would ride out the storm. As I waited there and gathered strength, the storm began to pass and soon I had the feeling it was time to go. Something, someone, somewhere, who had instilled me with a sense of well-being, stood behind me reassuring me of my safety. As I left my dark corner towards the hatch-door securing my refuge, I stopped to gather the courage to open the door. As I did so, I looked far ahead of me toward the front lines from which I had previously escaped.
The first few steps were very awakening and shocking as I felt the sting of the pain which I had previously eluded. Leaving my refuge was like a school boy’s first few steps out of a warm house in the morning during a cold snowstorm, beginning his walk to school. However, like a mother bird pushing the young birds out of the nest to learn to fly while she overlooks with a watchful and protective eye, so too was I pushed out with a gentle hand. The reassurance and security that I had learned to feel within my refuge went with me, and although I did not know what was awaiting me, I knew from this that I could face it.
My journey to consciousness was like that of a coal miner’s journey from deep within the mine, getting closer and closer to the surface. As I climbed closer to consciousness, I was able to sense the fresh air, like that of a refreshing summer breeze on the coal miner’s face when he reached the surface and gathered in the warm sunshine of the day.
My refuge was gone, but the feelings stayed within me. These feelings of safety allowed me to begin the road to recovery.
I opened my eyes on Wednesday, nearly five days after the accident. At that time it appeared I was going to live, although I still had difficulty maintaining consciousness. At that time, I still required the aid of a respirator and was yet unable to undergo surgery.
As the days passed, I slipped in and out of consciousness more readily, but when awake was extremely disoriented and confused, both from the trauma of the accident and from the brain damage which at that time was quite evident. I spent the next few weeks drifting between my unconscious refuge of tranquility and the waking state of confusion and pain. As I struggled to come to terms with what was awaiting me in my waking state, I found myself seeking the safety I had previously felt while in my refuge from within myself. I was able to withdraw from my waking state as I slipped back into my hidden world ofpeace. With each transition between waking and my refuge I progressively started my journey upward from deep within myself. Each transition brought me one step closer to the surface. Although very frightened and confused, I was able to summon the courage and contentment which I had felt while in my refuge, which remained within me. While in my shelter far below, I learned to foster great feelings of warmth and peace, which I was able to bring to the surface with me. Although I was no longer within the safety of my refuge, the feelings of security, peace, and contentment remained with me as I began my journey toward the surface. I was not certain of what awaited me as I approached my waking state, but I knew that I could face it with the feelings of security and well-being that I fostered while in my refuge. As I approached what then seemed inevitable, I felt great contentment that I had never experienced before except in my refuge.
Upon each awakening, the doctors told me over and over that I was in a car accident and was paralyzed. They told me I was a quadriplegic and that I would be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life—hopefully, an electric wheelchair if I had use of a hand to operate it. I would require assistance in all activities of daily living (ADL). After a few days, I was transferred to a recovery floor for spinal cord damaged and head trauma patients when my condition warranted that I was no longer dependent upon a respirator. After undergoing further CAT scans and X-rays, the doctors decided to perform a cervical fusion on my neck to give me added stability when being moved and when sitting upright in a wheelchair. When my respiratory system began to function and clear, the doctors received authorization to perform the operation.
My neck consisted of seven cervical vertebrae and in an injury such as mine, the higher the injury the worse the damage and subsequent paralysis. Consequently, the more vertebrae damaged the more severe the extent of spinal cord damage. I sustained a fracture-dislocation of my third and fourth cervical vertebrae, requiring that my second through fifth vertebrae be fused together as one. Several bones were cut from my hip and fused into my neck with wires and pins. The added bones acted as a bridge for new bone to grow across and become permanent. The surgery took seven hours to complete and four of the seven vertebrae were fused. After the surgery was completed, I was transferred back to the intensive care unit for recovery for two days.
At that time, the neurologists advised my parents that I would never have use of my arms or legs; I would be a quadriplegic for the remainder of my life. Furthermore, they said the next two weeks would be crucial in determining if I would get any movement whatsoever.
The safety and contentment of my refuge remained within me in my waking state and allowed me to put the fear, pain, and confusion aside as I focused on the external world around me. I did not know what the future would hold for me, but I did know that I was safe and whatever awaited me I could accept and overcome.
As I began the physical demands of therapy, I often seemed “absent” as I clicked back into my new “awareness” which I then experienced while conscious. My refuge acted as a well of “warmth” which supplied my body with the necessary nutrients for life—a well which continued to grow and overflow within me, draining off to other areas of my body as I directed its flow. Each night, as I began my struggle to repair my damaged body from within myself, I focused upon a different area of my body. I concentrated upon the warmth deep within me and became one with it. Then deep within the warmth at that point of very focusing, I concentrated upon bypassing the damaged circuitry of my spinal cord. As I flowed with the warmth throughout my body, I concentrated upon the circuit. My every extremity drewupon the warmth flowing deep within my body as it was filled with the life of the warmth that supported it. I was filled with a great feeling of “aliveness,” as I continually expressed to those around me the true joy of life that I then felt. Insistent as I was, doctors, nurses, and friends were skeptical to believe the genuineness of my feelings, as they labeled me as “confused,” “experiencing denial,” and having “unrealistic optimism for being alive.” As they waited for my spirit to subside and for me to “come to grips” with my problem, my spirit grew all the more stronger as my spirit ordered. They could not understand how I could feel “alive” and yet be without the use of my body. Feeling “alive” is not a state of body, but of “self” and this they could not grasp. How tied to the material they were!
I was able to find joy and contentment in my present situation. I did not know how I knew what I did. I simply “knew,” and trusted that feeling within me. Two weeks after the surgery which aligned my vertebral column and consequently relieved the pressure on my spinal cord, while conducting my personal care needs, the attending nurse noticed the toe moving on my right foot. Thinking it was a muscle spasm, she ignored it. Another nurse came into the room and then called for the doctor who was astonished when I started moving the toe on command.
On December 12, nearly five months of prayers and hard work later, I walked into my new life as I left Iowa Methodist Medical Center with the use of a cane.

### Section A-2: Altered States - Out-of-Body Experiences

##### II.A-2.1 Reflections on Lucid Dreaming and Out-of-Body Experiences

FATHER “X” A Catholic Monk

Note from Guest Editor, Kathryn Belicki: The following are excerpts from a series of letters written primarily to Charles Tart, with a few to Stephen LaBerge, by Father “X” from 1982 to 1988. In them, he describes his lucid dreams and OBEs, which commenced in 1974 and have occurred sometimes as frequently as three to four times per week. These experiences were not deliberately sought but occurred spontaneously. In fact, initially Father “X” underwent extensive neurological testing because he assumed a neurological problem was causing his experiences. When he discovered that he was not alone in having them, he began his fascinating correspondence with Tart and LaBerge, always sending copies to Jayne Gackenbach. In these letters he details his experiences, struggles with their possible meaning or significance, and speculates about their origin. With Father “X”'s permission, I have organized the following excerpts around several themes which emerge from his letters.

On the Need for More Investigation Into These Phenomena, and, More Generally, for Greater Understanding about Them by Both Professionals and the Public

January, 1982. I delayed writing to you because I am a Catholic monk, and I feared that if my experiences were made public I might possibly wind up becoming an embarrassment to my monastic community. This would grieve me deeply. On the other hand, I felt a strong obligation to reveal my experiences to some professional psychologist who is investigating this field, in the hope that my experiences might make some contribution to understanding this phenomenon.
I better say right at the beginning that my lucid dream experiences are tied up with another, even stranger phenomenon, which I can only describe as “out-of-body” experiences. I realize that the mere mention of this phenomenon raises smiles and sneers on the faces of a great many people, and believe me, there was no greater skeptic than myself until I began to have my own out-of-body experiences.
I did not reveal my experiences to anyone, for fear they would give me the same answer I was giving myself: that I was having hallucinations. Instead, I began prowling through the psychology section of our library to try to find some scientific or non-scientific explanation for these weird experiences. Finally, I came across a book entitled Altered States of Consciousness, edited by Charles Tart of the University of California at Davis I can’t tell you how reassuring it was to know that instead of hallucinating myself into a nervous breakdown, I could possibly be having a legitimate psychological experience, albeit highly unusual. As I began to have more and more of these experiences, my fear of them decreased sharply, because just as in the paralysis attacks, neither my physical nor my mental health seemed to suffer from them; consequently, my intellectual curiosity was aroused and I began a concerted effort to glean as much information from these experiences as possible.

October, 1982. I wonder if he realized how hard it was for me to write that letter: I agonized over it for months before I mailed it. It was not easy for a person who always thought of himself as being a fairly normal, well-adjusted adult, to have to confess that he was having experiences that defied rational explanation. Finally I became firmly convinced that my experiences were significant, but it would take a trained scientist to interpret them, and this was the motivating factor that caused me to write the letter. Any embarrassment I might encounter is surely a small price to pay.

March, 1983. The trouble with having frequent out-of-body experiences is that they force you to walk a very lonely road; you would like to talk to someone about them but where can you find someone who won’t think that you are a prime candidate for a mental institution? Orthodox medicine would be of little help: some of the doctors I know think it is rather strange for modern men to be living as celibate monks, so it would not be too difficult to imagine their reactions if I revealed my experiences to them—lack of normal sex life has obviously unhinged my mind. Many of my brother monks are loving, generous men but they would not know how to incorporate this sort of thing into their world; it would be completely foreign to their training unless it had spiritual overtones, which my experiences do not seem to have, at least not of a positive kind I have often tried to put myself in the position of the third person listening to someone telling me of his out-of-body experiences, without ever having experienced them myself; and as open-minded as I would hope to be, I would probably conclude that this person was a good candidate for extensive psychotherapy. It is really terrible the way we have all been programmed by our culture into believing that any psychological experience that deviated from the accepted norm must be labeled as an illness. I often wonder how many of us realize that the root meaning of that often ill-used word “hallucination” is “wandering in the mind.” What greater experiences can a person have than to explore the depths of his own mind?

March, 1988. But my major disappointment about my visits to this sleep laboratory was that nobody there seemed to know anything about lucid dreaming or the research that was being done on it. One of my motivations for going there was the hope I might find someone knowledgeable in the field who I could talk to about my experiences. Therefore it was a real disappointment that no one knew what I was talking about when I used the term “lucid dream.” I’m sure the psychiatrist thought I was talking about some vivid, unconscious dream; and when I started talking about out-of-body experiences and a possible demonic aspect to some of my experiences—well, I suspect that any possibility of my being taken as a rational person probably went out the window right there.

###### On the Relationship Between Lucid Dreaming and Out-Of-Body Experiences

January, 1982. After undergoing hundreds of these experiences, covering a period of seven years, I came to the conclusion that lucid dreams (or any type of dream) and out-of-body experiences are one and the same, which means, I suppose, that when we dream, we are actually undergoing an out-of-body experience; we have released some sort of “dream-body.” This is, of course, all speculation on my part, based solely on my own subjective experiences and not on any hard psychological facts.
I believe that these experiences did not just come upon me “out of the blue,” but were the end product of a strange paralysis which afflicted me for years. It was back in the early 60’s when I began to have sudden attacks of this paralysis during the evening as I lay in bed. It was right at that point when consciousness has let go and sleep is about to take over. The attacks seemed to last some ten or fifteen seconds, and although I was aware of my surroundings, I could not move a muscle from head to toe. The attacks kept coming, and along with them came a great deal of noise—sounds similar to an engine cranking up, . . . or the screeching of railroad wheels. If this were not enough, my body was trembling from head to foot with severe vibrations, and sometimes (not always) there were voices that seemed to be making small talk far off in the distance That is how it went from year to year until a night in late 1974 when something happened that gave me the scare of my life. I was lying in bed waiting for sleep to come on when I felt the paralysis beginning to take hold of me; sometimes I can fight the paralysis off if I catch it in time, but this time it swept over me too fast, so I just settled back to let it run its course:
…when the vibrations began, they were stronger than I have ever felt them and all of a sudden I felt myself being lifted off my bed and flung through the ceiling; the next thing I knew, I was floating in the air about 500 feet above the ground; but I was not outside my monastery; it looked like I was flying over a typical outlying suburb of any American city. After flying around for a few minutes I finally “landed.” It was around dusk, and I started walking up a street which had houses on either side of it. I reached a house where there was a young girl sitting on a porch; I noticed she had a bruise on her leg; as I had no idea of what to say I just blurted out the first thing that came to my mind: “Is there a church around here?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied, “there is one on the campus of National University.” “Is it a Catholic church?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied. She gave me directions, and as I resumed walking I could see the headlights of cars coming down the street, but before I reached the corner, I found myself back in bed.
Little did I know then that this was to be the first of hundreds of similar experiences which I refer to as “out-of-body” experiences for want of a better term.
The lucid dreams began the week following my first out-of-body experience; I was having a normal dream (by this I mean a dream in which I have no awareness that I am dreaming unless I wake up and reflect upon it) when all of a sudden something triggered complete consciousness in me:
I was now fully aware that my body was lying in bed and here I was in this “dream-world.” Recalling my out-of-body experience from the previous week, I jumped up in the air to see if I could float around, and sure enough, there I was, floating around like an astronaut in his weightless environment.

October, 1982. The reason that I made the supposition that out-of-body experiences and lucid dreams were one and same was because the only difference I could see between them was the way I entered them. The world I was entering appeared to be the same for both phenomena. My out-of-body experiences always began with a period of paralysis and vibrations throughout my whole body; next, I would feel myself leaving my body, and off I would go. The lucid dreams always began with a normal dream (possibly a better term would be “nonlucid dream”) which turned into a lucid dream. In some mysterious way my subconscious mind (which I assume is controlling my nonlucid dream) relinquished control of my thoughts and actions back to my day-conscious mind. But what about the dream-world environment that I am still in? Who or what is controlling that? Surely it could not still be my subconscious mind, unless it relinquished only a portion of control and still manifested control over the environment; but could this be so? Well, as I said, I am only a novice when it comes to understanding psychology of the mind.

January, 1986. I believe you (LaBerge) are absolutely right when you suggest that out-of-body experiences should be more accurately described as “Wake-initiated” lucid dreams (WILDs) because the people having these experiences are not traveling in physical space but in mental space, and consequently, have not left their bodies. I am sure that your idea will meet with a lot of resistance since most of us are so conditioned into thinking in terms of three-dimensional physical space, that the concept of mental space would be difficult to conceive.
I have always been uncomfortable with describing some of my experiences as “out-of-body” experiences for the following reasons:

1. Even when these experiences were extremely lucid and I had the vivid bodily sensation of moving around with the utmost ease, I always had this vague physical sense that I was still lying in my bed.

2. Then there was always the question of why I had never observed my body lying in my bed as Monroe and others have reported; even in those experiences where I found myself in a room similar to my own with a bed in it, the bed was always empty: on a few occasions the blankets were pulled back and there was an impression on the bed that a body had been lying there, but there was never any body.

3. Finally, and this is the most important one, there were always those even stranger experiences when I had returned from an experience (either an out-of-body experience or a lucid dream, it didn’t matter which). If I could feel the paralysis and vibrations still active in my body, all I had to so was just lie there and about sixty percent of the time I would reenter the experience I had just left or enter a completely new one. It was totally without the sensation of leaving my body—it was instantaneous. One second I would be lying on my bed and the next second I would be back in this strange dream world. I couldn’t call these experiences “lucid dreams” as they were not preceded by a normal dream, nor could I label them “out-of-body” experiences because I did not have the sensation of leaving my body, so what could I call them? It would seem that they would fall perfectly within your category of “Wake-initiated” lucid dreams.
So, even though I would place my “out-of-body” experiences within your category of “WILDs,” I am not sure that Monroe’s experiences could also be placed in that category, specifically because of his having observed his body lying in his bed, which would seem to indicate something other than a lucid dream; but I am getting out of my depth here so I will leave that question to you and other researchers.

###### On the Relationship Between Lucidity and Dream Control

October, 1982. Although it is true that in these experiences the environment does occasionally change, it is not due to any conscious effort on my part that I am aware of. In A New Model of the Universe by the Russian scientist, P.D. Ouspensky, the chapter on dreams makes for fascinating reading, especially where he describes his attempts at changing the environment of his dreams while in what he calls a “half-dream state.” He apparently was successful more times than not. I have made similar attempts in some of my experiences, but I have never been successful; consequently, I am led to conclude that the environment my experiences take me into is under the control of a source other than my own mind—conscious or subconscious.
During most of his experiences, Monroe seems to have full control over his “Second Body,” as he calls it, but this is not always the case with me. There have been many times when I could move around as freely as I do in our world, but there have been other times when I felt like I was walking through a sea of glue, with any movement painstakingly difficult. And there are varying degrees between these two extremes. Sight also can be a problem; again, sometimes I can see as well as I do in our world, but other times it is as if I am looking through a dirty windshield.

September, 1984. I can corroborate some of Dr. Tholey’s findings from my own experiences, but some of his other findings are contrary to mine. For example, I can support totally his supposition that the dream world seems to possess, at times, (more often than not in my case) an “inertia” or “lawfulness” all its own rather than being the dreamer’s subjective creation; in fact, I offered this suggestion in my original letter to Dr. LaBerge—that part of this world I entered seemed to be connected to my past history, but most of it was totally foreign to my experiences. Also, on any number of occasions I have tried to change the scene that I was confronted with but was totally unsuccessful, scenes do change and people do decrease in size but it is completely outside of my control.
There is something to his theory that fixing one’s gaze on some stationary object while in the lucid dream experience helps to dissolve the experience; on any number of occasions in my experiences while I was attempting to read some sign or paper, or concentrating heavily on the scene so as to impress it on my memory so I could write about it later, the scene began to fade and I found myself back in my bed. In a recent experience I tried his suggested technique of re-stabilizing the dream by glancing about, but it did not help at all, in fact I am convinced that it only helped to dissolve the dream. It is my feeling that if one could only just “flow” with the experience and not try to concentrate too heavily on it, the experience would probably last longer. But these experiencers are so extraordinary, how can you not concentrate on them in an effort to understand them? It is something like walking on thin ice; if you can keep your mind off how thin the ice is, it may not break, but how can you not think about it?

###### On Unpleasant Experiences in Lucid Dreaming, OBEs and Related Experiences

October, 1982. One of the most stunning similarities between Monroe’s experiences and mine is that we have both experienced “the man on our back.” It has happened to me several times, and all were equally frightening. They usually happen to me when I am literally pulled out of my body and propelled through the sky above the clouds at a terrific rate of speed; if it is daytime, I can see the ground through the breaks in the clouds; if it is evening, I can see lights below. It is when I start to slow down and descend that I begin to feel a heaviness on my back. When I reach the ground, I usually regain control over my body and am able to shake him off. The first time it was a young white male who said his name was Alan; another time it was, again, an young white male who asked me for an aspirin. The latest one was the most unusual because I was not taken outside and driven through the sky, but was kept inside and propelled through a series of strange rooms until I was finally deposited in a room with three young women, and a short, fat, smiling, middle-aged man with glasses jumped off my back. In all these experiences the conversations was hard to pick up and the experience was very short.
Another aspect of this world is that there don’t seem to be too many people smiling and laughing; and when you study some of their faces, there seems to be a hard cast to them, and sometimes there is a strange light in their eyes which is, to say the least, very unsettling.
Monroe, at times, also seems to have had the same difficulty that I had in attempting to read any printed matter—it is either out of focus or unintelligible. He also has met with the same wariness and caution that I have met, while endeavoring to obtain information about dates and localities from the residents of this world. If I persist in my questioning they get angry and sometimes downright hostile An atmosphere of menace can come about in different ways; sometimes just by the very fact of a nonlucid dream becoming lucid. Let me cite a recent experience which is a good example of this type: About a month ago in a nonlucid dream:
I found myself in some sort of restaurant having dinner with two acquaintances. After finishing our dinner we got up to leave; it was then I noticed my jacket, which had been hanging on the back of my chair, was missing. I became very upset, and we began looking for it. The other restaurant patrons, about seven or eight, also helped; even the cook came out of the kitchen to lend a hand. Then, all of a sudden, in some mysterious way, complete lucidity came over me; I now had my complete day-conscious mind about me. I knew everything about myself, my past, my present—that my body was in my bed asleep and I was in a dream. I spoke in a loud voice, “My God! I’m in a dream again!” (No matter how many times this has happened to me, it still astonishes me). My acquaintances and the other patron of the restaurant looked at me with what I can only describe as a malevolent look in their eyes, and a few of them said in a menacing voice, “Yes, you are in a dream, aren’t you?” Then the cook walked towards me with what looked like a saw in his hand and said, “Now we will show you what it is like to be in a dream.” He then proceeded to try to saw my head off; the next thing I knew I was back in my bed, head intact, I’m glad to say.
In another experience, a few years ago, a middle-aged man with a sinister face came up to me and said, again in a disdainful voice, “Whey don’t you people give up that old supper of yours?” His reference to “old supper” I took to mean the Christian Eucharist we celebrate at mass. There is another aspect to this particular experience which makes it unusual, and that is the fact that he initiated the contact with me; in the great majority of my experiences, I am usually the one who has to make the first move at conversation.
If I related these experiences to some of my brother monks, they would have no doubt as to what is going on here—it is obviously the work of the demonic, and there is a good possibility that I have been selected to be a candidate for demonic possession. I hardly think I am worth the trouble, but if some diabolical powers are planning to do some nasty things to me, they are certainly going about it in a very curious way. As I said previously, when I enter this strange world, the people I meet are usually completely indifferent towards me; I have a sense that they know I am there, but, apparently, they couldn’t care less. I am usually the one who has to initiate the conversation, and it is only when I start to pump them for information that they get angry and hostile.
I was deeply touched by Mr. Monroe’s very personal account of the collapse of any religious faith he once had in a purposeful universe, watched over by a wise God, full of compassion and love for his creatures. I know how devastating it can be when the values of a lifetime begin to slip away and are found to be, if not entirely untrue, at least to be standing on a very shaky foundation. As you may have guessed, I now exist (partly because of my experiences) on a knife-edge between belief and doubt. But so far I have not succumbed to the temptation to view my experiences as opening the door to the ultimate reality; rather, it may only be a way-station to a further, deeper reality which is still closed to us; at least, this is what I hope and pray for.

March, 1983. I was forever searching for a mirror to see what my reflection looked like; finally in one experience I found one, and to this day it still gives me chills up my back when I think of it. The experience began as a normal dream which turned into a lucid dream:
I found myself in what looked like a motel room as it had all the furnishings associated with that type of room; I spotted a dresser with a large mirror on it, and I immediately walked over to it and looked into the mirror. The reflection that I saw was me all right; I was wearing a monastic robe, and the face that looked back at me was my face, but it had a sinister, almost evil cast to it and my eyeballs were revolving in their sockets and I could see the whites of my eyes.
It was many weeks before I got over this experience, and I am not too eager to search for any more mirrors

September, 1984. Another puzzle I began encountering in these experiences was that of conflicting dates. In one experience,
I found myself in some sort of business office; I noticed that there were three calendars on the wall and each one had a different year printed on it—1970, 1971, and 1975—and when I pointed out to him the different dates on the wall calendars, I was met with sly, sneering looks and threatening gestures from him and the other office workers. This is another facet of my experiences which keeps popping up—if I question the accuracy of these statements, these people become angry and hostile.

January, 1986. There was one early experience that I related to him which I never told you about, primarily because I was afraid that you might be turned off by its religious overtones. It preceded all my out-of-body experiences and lucid dreams, and in terms of fear and terror it was the granddaddy of them all. What makes it so mysterious is the fact that it was neither a lucid dream nor an out-of-body experience. In the monastery we lived in cells or cubicles in a dormitory. One night late in the evening as I was lying in my bed trying to go to sleep, but as usual, being unsuccessful:
I suddenly became aware that the normal sounds that one hears in a dormitory at night—people moving in their beds, snoring, coughing, wood creaking, overhead fan blowing, etc.—all these sounds had ceased, there was absolute, total, dead, silence. My bed was facing a window and I found myself staring at the top of the window; there was nothing there but I just couldn’t move my eyes away from it. Then all of a sudden, a tidal wave of fear swept over me, the likes of which I have never before or since felt. For the life of me I couldn’t understand what was happening; it was so irrational as there didn’t seem to be anything to fear, but there I was, lying in my bed literally paralyzed with fear. I couldn’t move a hair, I just kept staring at the top of the window. Then the air around me stared to take on a strange heaviness as if some intangible force was pressing down on me. Suddenly, out of the blue, a thought flashed into my mind: it was a passage from a book I had read a few months before; a biography about one of our Catholic saints, a little French nun, St. Theresa of Lisieu, who died in the early part of this century. At the end of the book when she is on her death-bed, she asked one of the nuns standing by her bed to move the crucifix as close to her as possible because she was feeling the power of evil so intensely; and that is the thought that flashed into my mind and could not be dislodged no matter how hard I tried. How long did this experience last? It is hard to measure these sorts of things but I would guess that it was at least fifteen minutes or longer. Finally, as quickly as the fear came over me, so did it vanish and along with it the heavy air that seemed to surround me. Then I started to hear the normal sounds of the dormitory and I was able to move my eyes away from the top of the window.
As you may imagine, I didn’t go to sleep the rest of that night. I just lay there trying to come up with some rational explanation as to what had happened, but no rational explanation was forthcoming. About a week later I moved out of the dormitory and into one of the small rooms for snorers which had become vacated, then a few nights later my out-of-body experiences and lucid dreams began.
It has been almost fifteen years since I had that experience and I can still remember it vividly. As I said, I have had a number of subsequent experiences where I was terrified, but they were nothing quite like the fear I experienced that night. I realize that there are few, if any, psychologists around nowadays who believe in the reality of the demonic. As I have stated in a previous letter, even I am somewhat dubious about it, but I am still not totally convinced that it does not have some subtle influence, however small, over my experiences.

###### Reflections on the Origin or Nature of Lucid Dreams and OBEs

October, 1982. I realized that some people see out-of-body experiences as confirming the existence of a soul, but I believe that they are making a mistake; whether a person has an immortal soul (in the theological sense) or not, is solely a matter of religious belief; you either believe it or you don’t, and that is all one can really say about it.
What could this “unknown source” be? Could it be the “Collective Unconscious” that some people have speculated about, an unconscious which we all share in, or could it be an even stranger phenomenon, some sort of “Parallel Reality” which impinges on our sense-world and occasionally a “crack” opens and some of us are able to peer into this strange world with our conscious minds. Please understand that I am not speaking from a religious point of view; religion to me is a matter of faith, not of science; I am simply trying to make some sense out of these bizarre experiences which I have been undergoing for the past seven years.
Every day for the past several years I have been facing a question that seems to have only one of two possible answers. One is that my experiences are nothing more than wild hallucinations brought on by a subconscious mind that has somehow slipped its moorings and run amuck, firing off unknown neurons in my brain; therefore, I had better get myself to a psychiatrist, posthaste, to restore my disordered mind back to the normality, whatever that may be. The second is that this world I have entered is real, that it does exist, possibly in some other space-time continuum, and it does have some relationship to our world.
As I stated in the opening of this letter, after pondering this question for several years, I still don’t know which answer is the correct one. As a resident of this hectic century, I have no doubt that I have my share of neurosis, but I cannot believe that my mind, no matter how disordered, could have created this world. Every time I return from an experience, I am absolutely and totally convinced that this world exists. But after the passage of a few days, and I become involved in my day-to-day activities, doubts will start creeping in, especially the enormous one of what the impact would be on our religions and, possibly, our science—surely it would be immense.
Monroe’s idea that this world may be the anti-matter world existing on the other side of a black hole is intriguing, and certainly no crazier than what many reputable scientists have suggested what may exist behind those mysterious holes. One time I had the wild idea of trying to “bring something back with me” from this world to assure myself of positive proof of its existence. It happened about three years ago:
I found myself sitting around a conference table with a group of men. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about so I began fiddling with a pencil that was lying on my table; I could feel myself leaving the conference room and begin to see the vague outlines of my room; I also began to sense myself on my bed, but as I looked at the pencil, I could see that it was getting smaller and smaller, so I gripped it as hard as I could, and it seemed to stop shrinking, but I could now see that I wasn’t going anywhere; I seemed to be suspended between two worlds. Reluctantly, I released the pencil, and the conference room scene disappeared, and I was completely back in my body, without, alas, my pencil.
I was totally fascinated by Robert Monroe’s book primarily because some of his experiences were not unlike my own. It is very reassuring to know that a successful middle-class businessman and family man, whose lifestyle must be the polar opposite of my own—a celibate monk, has had out-of-body experiences similar to mine. I dare say any psychiatrist searching for the cause of our “affliction” would have to look somewhere other than our chosen lifestyle.

March, 1983. I have always been troubled by the thought that I might go to my grave without anyone knowing about my experiences, for I sincerely believe that somewhere among all my out-of-body experiences must lie clues to the mystery of our human consciousness, but it will take a wiser man than I to uncover them. If, however, in the final analysis, my experiences are found to be nothing more than hallucination (using the term in its most pejorative sense) brought on by a disordered subconscious mind, they still might be of some interest to some Freudian psychologist. Although my experiences may not be unique, I rather suspect that they belong in a special psychological category.
As I said earlier, I don’t know why I am able to enter this other state of consciousness—if that is what it is—there is certainly nothing special about me. I am about as average a person as you could find. However, I do have a number of unresolved conflicts stirring within me which could well have put enough pressure on my subconscious mind to kick open the door to this strange world. If the good doctors at Topeka VA Hospital put me under their microscope the way they did Robert Monroe, I fear a far different picture would emerge than the clean bill of health they gave to Mr. Monroe. I am sure they would zero in on these conflicts as the root cause of my “hallucinations,” and, as I say, they may very well be right. But if the price for resolving my conflicts is the closing of the door to this other world, I’m not sure I would want to pay that price. Please understand me; I don’t get any emotional or sensual satisfaction from traveling in this other world; as a matter of fact, more times than not, it can be extremely frustrating—but the intellectual challenge that it presents is just too great to let pass by.

September, 1984. One problem I have in trying to understand these experiences is that so many of them seem to be totally foreign to any events in my past life. For example, in one of my earliest experiences:
I found myself in what looked like an airline terminal; as I was wandering around, a black soldier in uniform came up to me and pointed to an insignia on his uniform which read “1921 Nicaragua.” He said that “it was the best thing that anyone could have” and then he walked away.
Now this happened back in 1975 before Nicaragua was in the news and I was at a loss to try to find any experience in my life to relate to it. In another experience:
I was passing what looked like a movie theatre and on he marquee I could read part of the advertisement (which is unusual because as I have said many times it is most difficult for me to understand any writing I come in contact with in these experience), the advertisement read: “. . . based on books by Robert Louis Stevenson.” It must be thirty years since I picked up a book by Stevenson.
So why am I going through all this? Mainly, I suppose, to convince myself what I have always thought and suggested to you in one of my early letters—that underlying all my experiences is some subtle demonic force at work. I realize how hard it is for scientists to accept this premise. It is equally hard for me to accept it, but there have been times in some of my experiences in which I felt a presence that literally froze my blood, and if I could have seen myself I’m sure that my hair was standing straight up. Therefore, since I am only a simple monk and not a reputable scholar, I would like to make the following wild speculations. Could it be that one of the individuals I met in my out-of-body experience was indeed one of Henry James’ creations and by giving him life on the printed page, James also gave him life in another level of consciousness; or could it be that James simply delved into his own subconscious realm where many spirits abide and plucked one out to give it life on the printed page? I have also been doing some reading on the life of Emanuel Swedenborg, specifically a book on his work by Wilson Van Dusen, entitled The Presence of Other Worlds. But I must confess that I don’t understand a lot of what Swedenborg is talking about; and the little I do understand, a lot of that I find hard to swallow. But I do believe (and can corroborate from my own experiences) Swedenborg’s main premise; than man’s life involves an interaction with a hierarchy of spirits.
It is really tragic that science with all its vast resources refuses to acknowledge the existence of any other realm of being outside our own known world. However, if my reading of the scientific journals we get is correct, that attitude may be changing; a few brave physicists are now maintaining that modern physics has reached a new way of looking at things; they are saying that the classical idea of a world divided into separately existing parts which interact is no longer valid.
Another possible explanation for my experiences that I have been thinking about might lie in that mysterious concept of the Fourth Dimension. I understand that with the advent of computer graphics, scientists are now able to do some amazing things; and for not a few reputable scientists, the possible existence of a fourth dimension is no longer considered as absurd. Well, in any event, I am no longer obsessed with the need to find an explanation for my experiences. I simply regard them as another facet of my existence.

March, 1988. If we believe that the mind is nothing more than a process emanating from the electrical and chemical reactions in the brain, then where else would lucidity be triggered except in the brain? Possibly we will have to wait for more sophisticated machines of the future before that question is answered. It might also be helpful if we could develop a new vocabulary for describing these types of experiences, especially for that term, “out-of-body,” which I have never been comfortable with, since there is so much metaphysical baggage attached to it. Even though that is how the experience feels, it is very unlikely that anything really leaves the body. But on the other hand, I don’t think that I can still accept LaBerge’s idea that it all happens in the mind (brain?). Then what does that leave us with? I suspect that we are in a situation similar to that of the physicists when they began probing deeper into the subatomic world and found that the customary terms like “subject-object,” “cause-effect,” “space-time,” “observer-observed,” etc. didn’t seem to carry much meaning in that strange new world. Well, I will let the professional researchers worry about that as it is way beyond my capacity.
And that brings me to another facet of my experiences which I fear will make you as a scientist a bit uncomfortable; but the title of your newsletter, “The Open Mind,” encourages me that you will give it a fair hearing. I am talking about what I refer to as the demonic. These types of experiences seem to be increasing of late, particularly in the last couple of years. One in particular I would like to draw your attention to, because it shook me up so much I had to talk to someone about it.
This experience occurred just before the bell rang for the 7:00 a.m. office.
I was just lying in my bed wide awake waiting for the bell to ring when I began to feel these strange chills throughout my body. This usually means that the vibrations are not far behind, and after that an out-of-body experience; but the vibrations did not come, just these strange chills getting colder and colder. Then I began to hear some mumbling off to my right, and when I looked over there, I saw this little man, looking like a ventriloquist’s dummy, smiling at me and chatting away in some incoherent language. When I asked him who he was and what was he doing in my room, he just kept smiling at me and mumbling away in that strange language. I got out of bed and grabbed him by his foot, then I bounced him off the ceiling like a rubber ball; when he came down I tried to grab him again but he scooted under my bed and came up on the other side. He then turned his face away from me so that I could only see his profile, and then he spoke these three short sentences which I heard as clear as a bell and had no trouble understanding, “We have Him. Christ is burning. The hummingbird men have Him!” When I tried to grab him again he disappeared and I was back in my bed.
I just lay there in bed, literally terrified by what I had just seen and heard, and trying in some rational way to understand what had happened As for myself, prior to my experiences, I counted myself among those “modern” religious believers who saw the devil as nothing more than a quaint symbol for my own disordered passions, but now, after all these strange experiences—well, now I’m not so sure about that any more. It is really mind-boggling—the fellow that we thought we had ridiculed into oblivion may actually exist. He is, after all, the second-most important figure in the New Testament.

##### II.A-2.2 Comments on OBEs and Lucid Dreams

###### STEPHEN LABERGE

Stanford University, California

In Chapter 9 of Lucid Dreaming (LaBerge, 1985), I argue that the only necessary feature distinguishing lucid dreams and OBEs is how the person interprets the experience. In order to have an OBE you must merely believe that you have in some sense “left your body.” Of course, the subjective sensations of being out-of-body provide no proof as to whether and in what way you actually have “left your body.” Those interested in the details of my reasoning should read the original.
Here I will confine myself to clarifying some misconceptions. Rogo (1985) argues that OBEs cannot be a form of lucid dreaming on the grounds that the two experiences are accompanied by different physiologies. Rogo cites evidence suggesting that lucid dreams occur only during REM sleep, whereas OBEs occur from almost any state except REM. Even if both of these claims were true, OBEs still could be dreams, since dreaming takes place in a variety of physiological states, not just REM. However, careful reading of my book reveals evidence proving both assertions false.
As to the first point, a variety of studies have demonstrated that lucid dreams characteristically occur during REM sleep. However, in my dissertation (LaBerge, 1980), I described the NREM Stage-1 sleep-onset lucid dreams of a single subject, a phenomenon later verified by Dane (1984). As to the second point, in the very chapter criticized by Rogo, I clearly stated that our laboratory subjects “frequently describe lucid dreams initiated from brief awakenings within REM periods as ‘leaving their bodies’” (LaBerge, 1985, p. 216). In fact five out of the 14 subjects who have signaled lucid dreams in the laboratory have reported this experience. Two examples are recounted in my book; perhaps it will clarify matters to quote one of them (my own):
It was the middle of the night, and I had evidently just awakened from a REM period since I effortlessly recalled a dream. I was lying face down in bed drowsily reviewing the story of my dream, when suddenly I experienced a very curious sensation of tingling and heaviness in my arms. They became so heavy, in fact, that one of them seemed to melt over the side of the bed! I recognized this distortion of my body image as a sign that I was reentering REM sleep. As I relaxed more deeply, I felt my entire body become paralyzed, although I could still seem to feel its position in bed. I reasoned that this feeling was most likely a memory image, and that actual sensory input was cut off just as much as motor output was. I was in short, asleep. At this point I imagined raising my arm and experienced this imagined movement as if I had separated an equally real arm from the physical one I knew to be paralyzed. Then with a similar imagined movement, I “rolled” out of my physical body entirely. I was now, according to my understanding, wholly in a dream body in a dream of my bedroom. The body I had seemed to leave, and which I now dreamed I saw lying on the bed, I quite lucidly realized to be a dream representation of my physical body; indeed, it evaporated as soon as I put my attention elsewhere. From here, I flew off into the dawn
I would say that having awakened from REM sleep, I was (as always) experiencing my body image in a position calculated by my brain. Since this calculation was based on accurate information about the physical world obtained through my awake, and therefore functional senses, the body position I experienced corresponded to my actual position of lying in bed. Since during sleep (particularly REM), sensory input from the external world is actively suppressed my sensory systems at this point no longer provided my brain with information regarding the physical world. Thus, my brain’s representation of my body image was no longer constrained by sensory information concerning my body’s actual orientation in physical space and I was free to move it in mental space to any new position that I chose. With no sensory input to contradict me, I could freely “travel” anywhere in mental space (pp. 217–218).
I doubt if most people think about their OBEs in such an analytical manner; they are more inclined to believe that if it felt like they were out of their bodies, they were. Sometimes the distinction between lucid dreams and OBEs is very fine indeed. For example, Father X writes that “the only essential difference between [my OBEs] and my lucid dreams is that I am totally conscious when I enter this other state of consciousness, whereas my lucid dreams always begin with a nonlucid dream and then it becomes lucid.” This is, of course, exactly the distinction I have repeatedly drawn between “Wake-initiated” lucid dreams (WILDs) and “Dream-initiated” lucid dreams (DILDs) (e.g., LaBerge, 1980, 1985). WILDs comprise about 25% of our laboratory sample of lucid dreams (LaBerge, 1985) and as I have said, they frequently take the form of “leaving one’s body.” I am making an appeal for a more scientific, critical-minded approach to the relationship of OBEs to lucid dreams. It is not enough to claim, as Monroe (1985) does, that OBEs are simply not dreams or that “those who have actively participated in [research at the Monroe Institute] have inescaped [sic], and conclusively accepted the reality of the out-of-body experience.” Monroe asserts that “the protocols, methodology, and measurement systems may be different from conventional scientific process, by necessity. Physiologic parameters are not necessarily the major gauge of non-physical events.” Unfortunately, Monroe appears to simply assume that the OBE is non-physical, occurring “without the support mechanism of a physical body and physical sensory stimulants [sic].” If this is science, where is the evidence? If it is not, as I fear, it may be like—Monroe’s words—”trying to measure and analyze electricity with a coffee cup.” Incidentally, what psychophysiology is trying to do is correlate mental events with brain physiology, not an altogether absurd undertaking unless you believe your brain is nothing more than a cooling system. Anyone more than “somewhat aware” of the recent developments in the study of lucid dreaming will know how successful the psychophysiological approach has been in shedding light on a phenomenon previously no better understood than the OBE. I see no reason why OBEs could not be efficiently studied by the same signal-verification methodology that is now standard for laboratory investigations of lucid dreaming.
I would like to leave readers with something to think about regarding what it might mean to “leave your body.” First of all, what exactly does “being in your body” mean?
Being in the body means constructing a mental body image. Because it is based on sensory information, it accurately represents the body’s position in physical space. While dreaming, we are out of touch with our bodies and consequently liberated from the physical constraints imposed by waking perception. Thus, no awkward sensory facts are present to limit our movement in mental space, and we are free to move out of the spatial orientation defined by “being in the (physical) body.” The part of us that “leaves the body” travels in mental, not physical, space. Consequently, it would seem reasonable to suppose that we never “leave our bodies” because we are never in them. Where “we” are when we experience anything at all—OBEs included—is in mental space. Milton’s famous phrase, “The Mind is its own place,” goes not quite far enough. The mind is not merely its own place, the mind is its only place (LaBerge, 1985, pp. 220–221).

References

Dane, J. (1984). A comparison of waking instructions and post hypnotic suggestion for lucid dream induction. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Georgia State University, of Atlanta.

Comments on OBEs and Lucid Dreams, Stephen LaBerge

LaBerge, S. (1980). Lucid dreaming: An exploratory study of consciousness during sleep. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University.

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

Rogo, S. (1985). Out-of-body experience as lucid dreams: A critique. Lucidity Letter, 4(2).

##### II.A-2.3 Lucid Dreams And OBEs

###### SUSAN BLACKMORE

University of Bristol, Great Britain

I was recently at a conference on vision—real vision that is, not the vision of mystics or lucid dreamers. There, over a few litres of Bulgarian beer, I got talking about lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences (OBEs).

“But why are they interesting?” asked one of the visual scientists. I began muttering about how nice they are; how difficult to induce; how exhilarating if you succeed; about the clarity of consciousness The trouble I had answering the question made me realise how unclear is my thinking about lucid dreams and OBEs. So what I would like to do today is to try answer that man’s question more effectively. Lucid dream research will be of interest to other scientists only if we can develop better theories, better integration with the rest of psychology and better experiments to test those theories.

So why are lucid dreams and OBEs interesting?

Why Link Lucid Dreams and OBEs?

First, since I mention them together, I had better explain the reasons why the two are linked.

1. The same people tend to report both (see Irwin, 1988; Blackmore, 1988).

2. Some lucid dreams lead directly into an OBE. In other words a person is asleep and dreaming andthen, when lucid, dreams of leaving the body and flying around.

3. In both consciousness is reported as specially clear and vivid.

4. In both the world experienced is more like that of imagination than of perception.

5. Flying is common in both.

On the other hand the major differences are that most OBEs occur during wak-ing while most lucid dreams occur during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This division is obscured by the fact that some experiences resembling OBEs occur in sleep. Some researchers count these as OBEs while others do not. Finally OBEs (perhaps only by convention or definition) occur in a setting closely resembling the physical world while lucid dreams can occur in any imagined setting. In other words if I were having an OBE now I would see the tops of all your heads and be able to fly around this room (or what appeared to be this room) but if I had a lucid dream there might be monsters coming out of the curtains or a gigantic hole opening up in the wall.
It is possible that OBEs and lucid dreams are best looked on as two aspects of the same underlying experience. I prefer to take them as independent, largely be-cause of OBEs occurring during waking activity. But either way I think any account of one must shed light on the other.
So now let me try to answer the question—why are they interesting?I could think of a few starting replies to offer: either personal ones or general ones.

1. They provide a means of access to ordinary dreaming.

2. They feel wonderful.

3. They are very hard to induce voluntarily.

4. They seem more memorable than ordinary dreams.

5. I feel more “myself” when lucid. (I think this did not go down too well!)

6. They provide insight into the nature of self and its apparent continuity

7. They are relevant to the problem of consciousness.

The first of these answers I gave mainly to appease the visual scientists. It is certainly true. The work of Hearne, LaBerge and Gackenbach among others shows that through studying lucid dreaming we can learn important things about all kinds of dreaming (e.g. Gackenbach and LaBerge, 1988). But I won’t say more about that here, partly because others will do so and partly because it does not, for me, address the real question about lucid dreams themselves. Why are they intrinsically interesting?

They are nice! Well, this answer didn’t go down too well. Why are they nice and what does that tell us? It is perhaps the hardest question of all and maybe even the most interesting. So I shall come back to it at the end.

They are hard to have. Yes they are. To anyone who has not tried to induce them this may seem far from interesting, but to most people who have, the sheer frustration of not being able to bring an intention to bear upon one’s dreams is sufficient to inspire either total rejection, or long fascination with lucid dreams.

Hard to Induce

So let us address this question. Why are lucid dreams hard to have? I would like to simplify it by assuming that the crux of lucid dreaming is to be able to ask, in the dream, “Am I dreaming?” and to be able to answer affirmatively, “Yes, I am dreaming.” The following hypotheses suggest themselves:

3a. It is actually no more difficult to ask this question when asleep than when awake. However, it is hard to answer affirmatively whether awake or asleep.

3b. There is something about the dream state which makes it especially hard to ask the question or to answer it. (e.g. low arousal, no opportunity for testing against sensory input).

3c. It is a problem of State Specific Memory—that is getting the intention across from one state to another.

It would be very useful to know this both for developing methods of lucid dream induction and for understanding the nature of the state.
Let us try to test the first hypothesis. One approach is to use Tholey’s method of induction by asking thequestion, during waking, “Am I dreaming?”
Tholey suggests asking this question about fifteen times a day. Now it is pos-sible that if you do this, and do it at the same rate during dreaming sleep, the chances of having a lucid dream are still quite low. Let us assume that the average night includes at most two hours of REM sleep. If you ask yourself the question fifteen times during the day that is only averaging once an hour. And of course the estimate of two available hours for lucid dreaming is likely to be far too high. So it is possible that the problem is no worse by night than by day. To test this one could train people to ask Tholey’s question either five times, fifteen times, or hundreds of times a day and plot the incidence of lucid dreams and compare the presumed rate of question-ing in waking and dreaming.
The high rate of questioning case is particularly interesting. Asking this question so often, indeed eventually making it a continuous questioning attitude, seems similar to the practices of mindfulness or self-remembering. I once practiced mindfulness consistently for seven weeks and unexpectedly found that I started having lucid dreams. They were still only few but I had lots of near-lucid and high dreams. My impression was that the dreaming and waking states were coming closer together.

This proposed experiment might tell us whether the question is harder to ask in waking or sleeping but is complicated by what answer is given.
In waking life you are likely to give the answer “No, I’m awake.” Indeed the tests you might perform, trying to read or to fly, etc., are all designed to lead to this conclusion. This habit might carry over into dreaming when in fact you want to answer, “Yes.” So perhaps practice is needed in answering, “Yes, I’m dreaming.” If this sounds daft consider the statement used in Tibetan dream yoga: “All things are of the substance of dreams” or the notion of the world of illusion. Indeed we know that the perceived world is a kind of mental construction so perhaps in asking the question we need practice in answering “Yes, it is all a dream.” This could also be tested by training two groups to give themselves the different answers. The effects of this can of course be deeper than inducing lucid dreams but I shall not pursue that one for the moment.
My guess (since I haven’t done the experiments) is that the hypothesis will be re-jected. It will prove harder to ask the question in a dream than when awake. But why?
One possibility is that of state specific memory. The intention to remember one’s dreams comes from waking and has to be got across to the dreaming state. An ideal test would be to initiate an intention in dreaming, to be carried out in waking, but this looks impossible to me. As a next best what if one tried to get such a question across into other states, for example by using hypnosis, or with some kind of intoxication. The subject could try to ask Tholey’s question (or for that matter some other ques-tion) in normal waking, and then in the other state. It would presumably (and I have some personal experience to confirm this!) be harder to remember to ask the question in the other state. This could either be because of state specific memory or something to do with the state itself. Now the intention has to be started from the other state and transferred to waking to test which is the case. Two possible outcomes are shown in Figure 1. If the effect is due to state specific memory we should expect outcome A. and if recall is intrinsically better in the waking state, outcome B. Of course what is so for drunkenness might not be the case for dreaming but it would be a start.

Lucidity More Memorable

My fourth statement was that lucid dreams are more memorable than ordinary dreams. Certainly they seem to be so but has this been tested?
It could be tested by training people differentially in dream recall and in lucid dreaming (say by asking Tholey’s question). One could start with three groups of subjects all of whom had low dream recall and very occasional lucid dreams—a typical starting point for some 30–40% of people.
One group are trained only in dream recall, by keeping a dream journal etc. The second group is given the same training but also have to ask Tholey’s question fif-teen times a day. The third group only ask themselves the question. Of course there will be interference, by the increased motivation, attention to dreams and so on, but the trend should still be clear. If lucid dreams are recalled only as well as ordinary dreams then groups one and two should have equal increase in lucid dreams and group three less. On the other hand if they are recalled perfectly (or at least much better than ordinary dreams) then groups two and three will have far more and not group one.

More “Ourselves” in Lucid Dreams

Finally we come to the reasons which make lucid dreams seem very special to those who have them. Perhaps the most impressive thing to lucid dreamers is that in some sense we seem to be more “ourselves” than in an ordinary dream, perhaps even than in waking life. The lucid dreams seems to have more continuity with wak-ing life than an ordinary dream does. Something similar is true for the OBE which is one of the reasons I have long been interested in it. It is also true of certain states induced during meditation and perhaps, prototypically so of mystical experiences. It is these experiences which bring people to say things like, “Now I know who I really am (or am not!)” or, “Now I know why I am here.” Often afterwards they can only remember that they thought it and cannot reconstruct why. The training of the mys-tic is perhaps one of being able to integrate these insights into everyday life. It may also involve creating greater continuity instead of the fragmentary awareness that most of us have.

What Makes Anything Real?

From all of this it is tempting to imagine that there may be some hierarchy, or other structured progression, of experiences varying in what we might call “realness of self” or the “continuity with self.” Add this to the fact that in mystical traditions “there is no self” and you have a fine starting muddle! However, I think, with the aid of a little cognitive psychology and a few thought experiments we may be able to penetrate this muddle a little bit.
What makes anything seem real? This is a question well worth asking. By try-ing to answer it (in many different states of consciousness) I developed a general ap-proach to altered states which casts some light on lucid dreams and OBEs. I think a lot of the work of seeing things this way had to be done in altered states of consciousness (ASCs). This may make it sound like State Specific Science (SSS) but in fact Tart’s (1972) idea of SSS was that everything had to be communicated to other scientists in the altered state. Unless you (and I) are all lucid dreaming now, then I cannot do this. So it is something else, and something I think we shall see more of, that is work which comes out of a knowledge and facility with altered states.
So why does anything seem real? I suggest the following.
Let us take the reasonable assumption that most of the brain’s task is modelling. That is, it constructs models or representations of the world around and the self with-in it. These models are closely based onperceptual input and information from mem-ory. Indeed the work of much of artificial intelligence, and of cognitive science is to understand the ways in which perceptual systems construct representations of the world. This is what the visual scientists at that conference wanted to understand. Pre-sumably during a lifetime the cognitive system learns to produce ever better models.
Of course we have to ask what we mean by better, and generally that means better at predicting. The models of the world constructed by the cognitive systems are very efficient at predicting what will happen next and bringing about actions consistent with those predictions. That is part of the business of living, procreating and surviving.

Self or Selves?

Now, what about the self? Who is that? Is it a little something (a spirit, soul or homunculus) looking at those models? Clearly not, for that would then raise the familiar problem of the necessity for a second perceptual system to perceive the models and so on to an infinite regress.
No, the self cannot be outside of the system. So what is it? I shall make some suggestions.
First it might be the whole system. Now this is important to talk about because we do refer to self and others that way. “This is where I live. Yesterday I met my friend Suzi. She is the one with green hair. We went on holiday last year.” In these statements we refer to the whole system. However, this is clearly not what we mean when we talk about who has pains or emotions.
Second we might say the self was just one of the many models. In a sense this is so. From social psychology we know about the socially constructed nature of the self. We represent self as having lots of attributes. We have a self-image and a body image. Yes, the self is a model. But again there is a problem. We must assume that the information for constructing that model is always there in memory. And yet “I” am not really “myself” in deep sleep and sometimes (perhaps in meditation or other ASCs) I seem to be perfectly myself without any of the attributes of a self image and body image.
So there seems to be an experiencer which is not identical with the self-model. Again we cannot use a homunculus or spirit or soul to solve this one.
Finally there seems to be a self who takes decisions and initiates actions. Can a model initiate actions? Is the whole system really responsible for “my” deciding to stop work and go out into the garden? Is the experiencer the same as the actor? Clear-ly not for many recent experiments show that actions are initiated unconsciously.
There seems to be a paradox here, but I think it is only apparent. The paradox is caused by assuming that there is only one self. Rather I think we should listen to those who say “there is no (one) self.” There are, rather, lots of things we mean by self. In the rest of this talk I shall be specific about them. In particular I want to distinguish:

1. I—the whole system;

2. I—the self model; and

3. I—the experiencer.

Now before I go any further I must emphasize that none of these are separate entities. They are allaspects of, or ways of describing, the whole cognitive system and its interactions with the world. I am not talking about three or more things inside a person.
Now imagine the whole system—a brain constructing models. There are lots of them, from the retina up through visual processing in the cortex, in the midbrain or cerebellum, in other parts of the cortex, there are lots and lots of different represen-tations. The funny thing is that “I” am aware of some of these models and not others. For example I am aware of the model concerning what I shall do at dinner tonight, or how I shall answer the questions which follow this talk. I am not aware of the repre-sentation of orientations of lines in visual cortex. Why not?
Again we cannot have recourse to any homunculus who sits in some parts of the brain and not others. We have to try to understand consciousness in terms of this whole modelling system.

Consciousness as Representation

Note that I have raised the problem of consciousness, the final item on my list of seven. This, I think, is ultimately what it’s all about for lucid dreams. The thing which makes them interesting to people who have them is the feeling of being “more conscious”—whatever that means! So we need to tackle this problem too!
I resolve the problem this way (though some of you may not think it resolved when I have told you!). In a famous paper, the American philosopher Thomas Nagel (1974) said, “An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism” (p. 43). I do not think we need to restrict the statement on or-ganisms. One might say instead—a thing is conscious if there is something it is like to be that thing.
Nagel went on to ask his well-known question “What is it like to be a bat?” I would ask what it is like to be all manner of things, just to get us going.
What is it like to be a piece of mud in a field? I should say not much. There is nothing which makes that piece of mud even separable from other pieces of mud except that some person might look at it and interpret it as so. Unless one believes in natural kinds this is so of any thing you may choose—like this acetate sheet or this table. It takes someone to think of it as a separate thing before you can even ask the question of it.
Now this gives us a clue. For perhaps it is the very act of representing some-thing which brings about its status as a thing. It is in a representation that qualities and similarities and differences are expressed. And it is similarity and difference which differentiate the world. So I shall ask Nagel’s question again. This time in the form, “What is it like to be a mental model?” This is the whole crux of my argument. For I believe that it is meaningless to ask, “What it is like to be stone?” because a stone, of itself, has no qualities, attri-butes, or (therefore) changes. On the other hand it is meaningful to ask, “What is it like to be someone’s model of a stone?” For the very act of modelling something is one which creates or constructs features, attributes, changes and so on. And so I say—it is the fact that human systems build representations which makes it possible to ask, “What is it like to be a person?” Now we can go back and see that it cannot be the whole system which is conscious. Rather it is each of the many representations constructed by that system which can be. But why should some seem to beconscious and not others?
I suggest this too is an illusion. All the models in the whole system are con-scious (you can ask what it is like to be them). What makes “me” aware of any of them at any time is only one thing—whether or not they are a part of the model which includes my self-model or self image. Thus we can imagine a system creating multiple models only some of which make sense to, or are part of, the self model. “I” am conscious of those parts and not the rest. Alternatively you could say that they were not conscious of me. For “I” am only another model. So when we talk about a conscious self I suggest we are referring to just one model in the system. I shall call this “I.”

Consciousness, External Reality and OBEs

I began with the question, “What makes anything seem real?” This is not the same question as what makes things be “in consciousness.” At any time “I” may be aware of all sorts of things, both imagined and “real.” I suggest there is a pragmatic process going on in the system. It needs to know which of its models refer to the external world and which to imagined or constructed things. A safe bet (and a useful constraint for the system) is that there is only one external world. So, I suggest, it takes the best model it has got at any given time and calls that “reality.” Normally the best model will be the most stable, coherent and predictable. It will be that based on sensory input. All other models in awareness will be labelled, by contrast, as “thinking” or “imagination.” So the system always has a good “model of reality.” Where does this get us with ASCs, and in particular OBEs and lucid dreams? First it provides a theory of the OBE.
In ordinary waking life the input-based model is the one that is real. But what if input is disturbed, or the system is damaged in such a way that a good input model cannot be constructed? What if it is very tired and not up to doing good predictions. In other words what would happen in just those circumstances which tend to favour the OBE? I suggest that the system will lose input control. Then, if it is determined to survive, it will try to reconstruct a decent model of reality on the basis of what information it has available. Since (we have hypothesized) there is not much input, it will have to use information from memory—doing the equivalent of thinking, “Where am I? Who am I?” etc. One thing we do know about memory models is that often (though far from always) they are constructed in a bird’s eye view. It is a convenient way of representing complex information. If this sort of model is con-structed and is the best the system has got at the time then it will, according to my theory, come to seem real. Hence an OBE has occurred. The person is aware and in a world which seems real, but that world is a bird’s eye view from memory. In the OBE nothing much has changed except for the apparent viewing position. Instead of looking out from the eyes “I” am looking down from the ceiling, but I may seem to be the same self because there has been no great change in self-image. The OBE seems real not only at the time, but when looking back, for a similar self (model of self) looks back on it as the one being used at the time. So the OBE seems more or less continuous with ordinary waking life.

Self-Models, Dreams, and State-Specific Memory

What now of the lucid dream, or for that matter of ordinary dreams?
Sleep is the archetypal situation in which input is cut off. But there is more than that. In most of sleep, arousal is extremely low. The system cannot support complex models and there is therefore no good model of self of which to ask “What it is like to be that model?” In other words there is no, or very rudimentary, consciousness.
In REM sleep, things change. Arousal is much higher, the system can support some quite complex modelling. One can ask, “What is it like to be those models?” and the answer tells us what it is like to be dreaming. Things happen, people come and go, events turn into other events. The models, free of input control, shift about and transmute one into the other. At the time they seem perfectly real—they are the best model the system has going at the time. However, afterwards they don’t seem so real anymore. When you wake up a new model of self is reconstructed. It is sim-ilar to the one from yesterday. It allows access to recall of yesterday’s events. There seems to be continuity between now and yesterday, but not between now and the dream. It was a different self (model) who experienced the two times.
But there are other possibilities in dreaming. Let us suppose that arousal is tem-porarily increased during dreaming and more complex models are built. In this case a model of self may be constructed which is rather similar to the usual waking ones. This model might include things like the person’s name, the day of the week and so on. With this information available the contents of the dream may seem bizarre. The obvious differences from normal life will be more obvious. In other words the question is more likely to arise “What is going on? Is this a dream?” In this same state things will seem real. They might also seem more complex and interesting than in an ordinary dream. But the real difference is afterwards. Because the model of self is similar to the waking model the lucid dream will seem more continuous with waking life. In other words it will feel more like “me.” “I” will remember it as being part of “my” experience. I am suggesting here a very general effect of state-specific memory. In altered states of consciousness you can recall things better when learning and recall occur in a similar state. I am suggesting that this depends on the similarity between the models of self in the two states. In other words the apparent continuity of life is only because of the similarity of our day-to-day models of self. Altered states appear to involve other worlds (the dream world, the trip, etc.) because different models of self are constructed. Most of them happen by force of accident or drug effects on the nervous system but controlled change is possible. Even integration of the different models is possible. The importance for lucid dreams is that they are more memor-able than ordinary dreams only because the model of self which is constructed is more similar to the usual waking one.
Looking at altered states this way I think we can gain insight into the nature of lucid dreams and OBEs. However, more than that is needed. If the theory is to be useful it must provide testable predictions. According to this approach, the OBE involves the construction of the world from a different viewpoint. People who have OBEs should be those who are better able to switch viewpoints in their imagery. This I tested by asking people to imagine the room they were in from a variety of different viewpoints and to switch back and forth between them. The OBErs were better at this switching (Blackmore, 1987). I also predicted that OBErs should be those who tend to remember things using a bird’s eye view rather than eye-level view. This I confirmed for dream recall but not for recall of waking events (Blackmore, 1987). I also predicted that OBErs should be those who tend to remember things using a bird’s eye view rather than eye-level view. This I confirmed for dream recall but not for recall of waking events (Blackmore, 1987). Irwin found the same effect and has argued that it supports his somaesthetic theory of the OBE (Irwin, 1986). So this is providing an interesting point for further testing.

Induction of Lucid Dreams and OBEs

Another approach concerns how the experiences are induced—and this high-lights the difference between OBEs and lucid dreams. It is difficult to have an OBE deliberately because you have to get the normal model of self out of the way first. Spontaneous OBEs occur only because an accident, drug orcoming close to death, has disrupted that model and made it easy. This leads to the prediction that sponta-neous and deliberate OBEs should come about in quite different ways and happen to different people who have different skills. In a survey (Blackmore, 1986) I found that the people who had spontaneous OBEs tended also to have flying dreams and mystical experiences while those who had deliberate OBEs were the ones with good dream control skills; able to stop and start dreams at will, wake themselves up out of dreams or choose dreams.
Having a lucid dream requires something else again. The problem is not to get a solid model of self out of the way but rather to create a good enough one in the first place. Only with a reasonable model of self can you realise that you are asleep and dreaming. This makes clear the greatest difference between the waking OBE and the lucid dream—for all their superficial resemblance. In the OBE the state is con-strained by the constant danger of the normal model of self reasserting itself. It will then take over again as “reality” and the world of imagination is lost. In contrast the lucid dream is constrained by the danger of falling back into deeper sleep and losing the tentative model of self which made the lucidity possible.
The potential of the two states is then quite different. The OBEr is really in a deeper illusion. She imagines that the world she sees is the physical world as it would be seen with her eyes open, that is, she is misled into mistaking a memory model for a sensory one. Research which seeks for actual astral bodies or para-normal effects in the OBE is just perpetuating this confusion.
By contrast the lucid dreamer is well aware of the illusory nature of the dream —indeed it is this which defines the lucidity. However the OBEr has the greater potential. If only she can see through the illusion and realise that this is a world of the imagination then anything is possible. Once free of the constraints of the normal self-model, it is possible to explore everything the mind is capable of, from complex scenes to complete openness or emptiness. Meanwhile, the lucid dreamer, however lucid, is forever limited by being asleep. The sleeping brain can achieve only so much without waking up. Perhaps what is needed is greater lucidity throughout life, waking and sleeping. Only then can we see through the pervasive illusion that we are unitary conscious beings inhabiting a solid and real world.
Finally, I put off answering the question, “Why is it so nice?” The answer should now be obvious. Of course it is nice to be free of input control; to be a model of a self, free floating and exploring the creations of an information processing system. It is a rare chance to feel perfectly conscious while experiencing the con-tents of your imagination. If you only have the skills to do so you can experience anything you can imagine as real.
In conclusion I think I can now explain better why OBEs and lucid dreams are so interesting. It is because they tell us so much about ourselves, about conscious-ness and about the illusions within which we live most of our lives.

References

Blackmore, S.J. (1986). Spontaneous and deliberate OBEs: A questionnaire survey. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 53, 218–224.

Blackmore, S.J. (1987). Where am I? Perspectives in imagery and the out-of- body exper-ience. Journal of Mental Imagery, 11, 53–66.

Blackmore, S.J. (1988). A theory of lucid dreams and OBEs. In J.I. Gackenbach and S. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. New York: Plenum.

Gackenbach, J.I. & LaBerge, S. (Eds.) (1988). Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. NY: Plenum.

Irwin, H.J. Perceptual perspective of visual imagery in OBEs, dreams and reminiscence. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 53, 210– 217.

Irwin, H.J. (1988). Out-of-the-body experiences and dream lucidity: Empirical perspectives. In J.I. Gackenbach and S. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. New York: Plenum.

Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review, 83, 435–450.

Tart, C.T. (1972). States of consciousness and state-specific sciences. Science, 176, 1203–1210.

### Section B: Meditation

##### II.B.1 Lucid Dreams and Meditation

###### HARRY T. HUNT

Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada

A problem with many studies of lucid dreams is their theoretical and empirical insularity—a lucid dream, apparently, is a lucid dream is a lucid dream. Of course things are always uniquely themselves, but to see what something means, it is necessary to try to place it in the broader context of its natural series with related phenomena.
So it is with lucid dreams. A lucid dream, of course, is knowing you dream while the dream is actually going on. It is sometimes seen as an approximation in the dream to our waking cognitive faculties, but that is doubtful since it makes it sound like lucidity is necessarily unique to dreaming and since experienced lucid dreamers do report confusions of thought and memory that are characteristic of the rest of dreaming. Rather, lucid dreams are as different from ninety percent of waking experience as they are from ninety percent of dreaming. They share with out-of-body experience, near-death experience, and especially with meditation, a special sense of clarity, exhilaration, and freedom (reminiscent of Maslow on “peak experience”) that comes with emergence of a detached receptive attitude in the midst of our more narrow everyday involvements—whether dreamt or real. Lucid dreams are a spontaneous form of the state of mind sought within the so called “insight” or “mindfulness” meditative traditions. They transform dreams in the same way that meditation transforms wakefulness. Meditation is privileged in this comparative series because we know so much about it from the point of view of very different theories and methods. If this comparison is useful, then not only will meditation cast a uniquely clarifying light on lucid dreams, but lucid dreams will help us with otherwise obscure points about the nature and goals of meditation.
For instance, the first problem we come to is that we do commonly associate meditative practice not with a balance between what Deikman calls the receptive or observing self and ongoing involvements, but with isolation and withdrawal. But only in its early stages. The “mindfulness” or “basic witness” set is so hard to develop and goes so against the grain of ordinary participations that most traditions begin in the maximally simplified context of “just sitting.” Once stabilized, however, many traditions try to extend mindfulness practice into first simple, then more complex activities—as well as into ordinary dreaming and sleep. Accordingly, more and more of the meditator’s life approximates the qualities of a lucid dream—involved, yet detached and observing at once, with the resultant subjective sense of “clarity” and “being.” The best illustration of this attempt to be “lucid” during normal waking activities is found in the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky teachings—which reject ordinary “with-drawn” meditation altogether and cultivate a continuous sense of “self-remembering” in the midst of everyday settings, where otherwise we lose ourselves and forget we are alive. That is, the full context to which successful “self-remembering” wakes us up in the form of a “being” or “I am” experience does sound like dream lucidity.
Of course some of the best evidence for equating lucidity and meditation comes from the development of lucid dreams in advanced Tibetan Buddhist practice—which they understand as the form of meditation available during sleep. The recognized dream is to be transmuted in various ways and one also attempts to understand ongoing waking experience as itself a dream—both of these being an aid to realizing thenonsubstantial, open bases of all experience (Chang, 1963). Dream meditation on the immediate thatness of the dream experience leads to a direct insight into the way that things are at once definitely formed and clear, yet open, empty, and illusory—which is not so much the expression of a metaphysic as a phenomenological description of what results from “turning around” on immediate experience for its own sake. For instance, similar descriptions come from the early introspectionists’ studies of William James, Titchener, and Carl Rahn.
My colleagues and I at Brock have recently reported phenomenological, psychophysiological, and correlational links between lucid dreaming and meditation. With Bob Ogilvie and Paul Tyson, we found heightened EEG alpha with prelucid, relatively bizarre dreams and evidence that experienced lucid dreamers may show a mixed organismic state—transitional between the states of sleep and waking (Ogilvie et al., 1982).
But I concentrate here on a study with Barbara McLeod in which we found significantly more lucidity in long term meditators and its correlation with years of meditative practice (Hunt and Ogilvie, 1988). Along these lines, my student Roc Villeneuve has just found a correlation between lucid-control dreams and intensity of response to a meditative technique taught to them within the experiment. In the same study with long term meditators we also found that just as waking meditative practice eventually leads to the release of major alterations of consciousness, such as white light or luminosity experiences, so there were significant associations between degree of lucidity and archetypal/psychedelic dream content rarely seen in normative samples—such as geometric/mandala patterns, encounters with archetypal figures, and various luminosity phenomena of the kind described by George Gillespie (1985) and Scott Sparrow (1976). Since there is no association at all between degree of lucidity and deliberate attempts to change one’s dreaming toward lucidity, it may well be that dream lucidity and control develop automatically as the result of long term meditation. We were especially interested to find that some of our subjects were not sure themselves how to categorize their highly unusual dreams—they sometimes could not tell whether they had awakened and were spontaneously meditating or whether they were asleep and having what we had defined for them as a lucid dream.
Now that I’ve worked to define lucid dreams as a form of meditative state—in terms of their double awareness of context and specific involvements, and the resulting sense of clarity and exhilaration, I should return to the relativities of defining anything in its essence—because one of my own dreams recently showed me that as important as such attempts at generic classification may be, a dream could fit all these descriptive criteria and still not actually be lucid.
I dreamt I had returned to a small house full of sleeping cots called the “rest house.” I was about to lie down when a disembodied but familiar voice said “You’re acting like you really think you’re in the rest house, but you’re not, you know. Try and figure out where you really are.” Fascinated, I looked about me with the sharpened sense of clarity and excitement that I associate with my own, all too few lucid dreams. I knew things weren’t as they seemed and I stared at the walls waiting for them to collapse into my “real” surroundings. But they just got more and more crystalline and radiating until I woke up.
Slightly chastened, I realized that it had never occurred to me that I might be dreaming, although it was a spontaneous meditative-like state. Now there is no getting around the fact that lucidity has to be defined as knowing you dream, but I would still suggest that this is not why we study lucid dreams. We study them because of the valued subjective effects usually (but not always) released by lucidity control. A common underlying cognition between lucid dreams and meditation is implied by the way that meditation gradually extends itself into dreaming as lucidity and by the way that developed lucid dreamsbecome more and more visionary and oriented toward a spiritual interpretation of life.
In fact I would argue that part of the traditional “function” of any seriously held spiritual belief is to create the “lucid” sense that we are simultaneously part of this world and its doings and yet detached from it by virtue of a broader intelligence of context—which does normally elude us. Consider what we call the “belief” in reincarnation. One is in a particular life but it is as if a dream when sensed as one in a long series of such lives, and yet it is also utterly important in determining how those future lives will be lived. Even secular existentialism creates much the same dual awareness. Such beliefs help to convey the experience of “being,” while lucid dreams and meditative states can directly elicit this same sense of context—one which clearly requires its own specific cognitive psychology.

References

Chang, G. (1963). Teachings of Tibetan yoga. New York: University Books.

Deikman, A. (1982). The observing self. Boston: Beacon Press.

Hunt, H.T. (1987). Lucidity as a meditative state. Lucidity Letter, 6(2), 105–112.

Hunt, H. & Ogilvie, R. (1988). Lucid dreams in their natural series. In J. Gackenbach and S. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. New York: Plenum.

Ogilvie, R., Hunt, H., Tyson, P., Lucescu, M. & Jeakins, D. (1982). Lucid dreaming and alpha activity.

Perceptual and Motor Skills, 55, 795–808.

Sparrow, G.S. (1976). Lucid dreaming: Dawning of the clear light. Virginia Beach, Virginia: ARE Press.

##### II.B.2 A Discussion Between Charles Tart and Lucidity Letter Editor, Jayne Gackenbach, Examining Similarities Between Dream Lucidity, Witnessing and Self-Remembering

CHARLES TART and JAYNE GACKENBACH

University of California, Davis; Athabasca University and University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Gackenbach: In a recent review of your book Waking Up, John Wren-Lewis said it was very relevant to those interested in lucid dreaming.

Tart: I was very honored that he would say that it is must reading for people who are into lucid dreams since lucid dreaming is mentioned only once in the book. You see, lucid waking is the topic of greatest interest to me nowadays.
Some spiritual traditions use an analogy that we live in a dream. In many dreams, you get pushed around by events. You’re not very smart. You don’t remember important, relevant knowledge. You’re inconsistent. You don’t call on all your resources. You get in these terrible situations, but then you wake up! Not only does the dream problem disappear, but you’re so much smarter by comparison. Smarter from the point of view of the waking state, right?
Now some spiritual traditions have used this as an analogy. They say that in our waking state (where we think we’re so smart and intelligent), we’re just as stupid compared to what could be. So that, in a sense, there’s a kind of lucidity that could happen in ordinary waking. My Waking Up book is really about lucid waking; that would have been a good title. . .

Gackenbach: What’s your dream recall like these days?

Tart: I’ve given my unconscious the instruction, “If it’s important, please make me remember it.” Otherwise there are other things I’m more interested in. I used to be an extremely high recaller. I used to wake up, and if I bothered to write my dreams down, I’d spend an hour a morning at it! Now I typically recall part of a dream on waking. I scan it quickly to see if there’s some kind of message or something exciting: if not, I let it go. Lucid waking is much more important to me than the lucid dreaming.

Gackenbach: As I understand the Ouspensky-Gurdjieff material, upon which your book is based, there’s essentially an asking of a critical question, a self-reflectiveness, an attempt, purposely, to reflect on what you’re saying and doing as much as possible through the day.

Tart: It’s not usually expressed as a question, but if you did, it would be asking yourself something like, “What am I doing right now, what am I feeling right now, what am I perceiving right now, what’s my state right now?” You could do it that way, but it’s usually not done in such a verbal formation.

Gackenbach: How is it usually done?

Tart: It’s an immediate shift of attention to being conscious of the normally unconscious. Once you do it, you realize that our ordinary state is that we’re “lost.” We don’t know what’s going on much of the time. We’re just as passive in ordinary life as we are in dreams. Events happen and our mental processes react. Buttons get pushed, to use that wonderful old sixties language and our conditioned responses occur. A set of mental scenarios begin. Normally you’re just running on automatic with these things all the time. Becoming self-reflective, you consciously see yourself doing these things. As you pay enhanced attention more and more, you begin to get an option to be present to your experience more continuously, and to both have more control and be more open to new experience.

Gackenbach: Is there a distinction between being (I like the term) “present to your experience,” and the concept of “witnessing” while awake, sleeping, dreaming—twenty-four hours?

Tart: Witnessing is a concept I’d be very happy to use. There are a number of ways to observe yourself. Some ways are biased or have built-in preferences. For example, lots of people observe themselves from their superego. Your superego has a listing of what is good and bad. It watches you and gives you a shot of anxiety when it thinks you are doing something bad. That’s not what I’m talking about. In the first place, superego witnessing is automated. In the second place it’s not yours, it was conditioned into you by outside forces—society, your parents and so forth.
There’s another kind of witnessing where you look at everything from a specific point of view. For instance, you could get into some spiritual system that said, you should recite this mantra all day long and you will go to heaven or achieve bliss or something like that. So you are intellectually interpreting everything that comes in in terms of keeping the mantra as an organizing core. But you’ve still got a particular point of view.
Behavior therapy is a kind of self-observation, usually of a rather limited sort. Write down every time you do a certain thing. It’s a very specific kind of self-observation. The kind of self-remembering I’m talking about says, in the most abstract sense to be fully present to everything that happens and be fully aware of being present there.

Gackenbach: So the “effort” aspect is not there?

Tart: There is an effort but it is a small effort. It’s not much . . . The effort is to remember to do it, because what you discover is that you’re constantly swept away by phenomena. Gurdjieff once put it that the idea we automatically have self-consciousness must be a cruel joke played upon us. In point of fact, most of the time we are not fully conscious. I can say from my experience, unfortunately, it’s true. Most of the time there’s nobody home. Gurdjieff put it very strongly. We’re machines; we’re running on automatic. You know the East has a similar sort of idea that we live in samsara or maya. It’s translated to mean the world isn’t real, but that’s not the correct translation. It’s a recognition that we’re constantly filtering our experiences through an automated psychological superstructure that distorts our perceptions of reality. In that sense we live in illusion. You know the thing that really amuses me? The East has the idea that we live in a state of illusion, but western psychology has the nuts and bolts of just how we live in illusion down to a very fine degree of precision. We know the way we construct what we call reality and we know about defense mechanisms. We just don’t put it together somehow. We don’t question our idea that we’re conscious and have free will.

Gackenbach: What about the new work in perception and imagery? It deals with the inner interplay at higher levels—one affects the other—it’s not just that one is the other.

Tart: That’s clarifying the nuts and bolts issues. The reality is that we open our eyes and assume there’s a real world out there. It’s a very handy working assumption. Some stimuli hit our sense organs. Some neural impulses are produced, and we assume that we see things as they are. But I think psychology now makes it clear that there are all sorts of abstractive, constructive, additive processes that interfere with a realistic perception of the world.
One of the analogies that I use in the Waking Up book is that we live in a world simulator, like a flight simulator. When you’re in one of those things you think you’re in the cockpit of a plane. It does all the appropriate things [and the view from the window looks “real”]. We live inside our world simulator. Not only that, we love it. Not only that, we don’t know we’re in it, which is a dangerous thing. Once you get the idea that you might be distorting things, there’s an obvious moral. Pay more attention, dummy! Check up on yourself! But until you get that idea, you don’t check up on yourself. You don’t make the effort to know it. I look a little more clearly. I watch my reactions while I’m looking to see if they’re distorting things.
For example, you’re making the effort to be more present to experience: you look at someone, and it’s immediately unpleasant. You notice you turned away. Wait a minute, who turned away? I didn’t decide to turn away. My God, I’ve got some automatic reaction: when I see such and such, I automatically turn my head. Who’s running this show? Maybe you make yourself look back, and you feel sick. Can you stay present to exactly what the experience of feeling sick is like? Can you learn to stay in reality and study yourself? Watch your reactions? And eventually get back to seeing reality? Eventually you see that this actual person doesn’t make you sick at all, but he really reminds you of this [other] guy who pisses you off no end. Your mind is just automatically turning anybody who’s tall into this guy, or something like that.

Gackenbach: Paul Tholey has a strong viewpoint which most people in lucidity work agree with. The crucial way to obtain lucidity, he’s decided, is to ask the critical question, “Am I awake, or am I asleep?” and while awake, force an awareness of the state, of the nature of the state. Eventually it will translate into sleeping. That’s a view we see a lot in the lucidity literature. Is this what you’re speaking of?

Tart: I lecture on it to my students all the time, advising them to observe themselves.

Gackenbach: I’ve learned from people I’ve been working with at the Maharishi International University (MIU) that the Maharishi some 30 years ago met a few of Gurdjieff’s students in England. What he felt (I gather to some extent based on those experiences, although it may be that there are other reasons) was that the Gurdjieff method was too forced. Witnessing, he feels, is a natural state of the organism. It will emerge naturally. His technique, of course, is through the practice of Transcendental Meditation. The witness will emerge at various times in the cycle of sleep, dream, waking, hypnagogic, whatever. It will naturally emerge. The problem with the other technique, as he understood it, was that there was a force element. And that’s of course exactly what Paul’s saying. Can you respond to that?

Tart: There certainly is a forced element. There’s several things I could say about that. One is that Eastern teachers tend to come from cultures that have much more faith than we do, that things will happen, right? Just say your mantra and things will eventually happen. We Westerners, we’re impatient. We don’t have that much faith and we want to make sure we do it right. So we tend to force.
Now I’m quite aware that forcing can ruin a technique. I’ve ruined experience many times by adding a too forced quality. “Force” does something useful, but it too easily puts a tension and a constriction inthere. It doesn’t need to be in the process; you can use just the right amount. One of the things I’m personally working on now is to get the “superego” as it were, out of the self-remembering process.

Gackenbach: I’ve been interviewing long-term meditators who witness and I’m trying to identify to what extent it is like lucidity. It seems that an active/passive model is a pretty good one for distinguishing between them. Lucidity basically [involves] a physically and psychologically aroused, actively involved participant. With witnessing there’s more of the predominance of the observer. It’s non-involved—almost like a movie screen. It can go either way, from lucidity to witnessing or from witnessing to lucidity. Some will argue that lucidity is a first step to witnessing, that it’s a developmental sequence. I wonder if it can flip back and forth.

Tart: I’d be more inclined toward that.

Gackenbach: I think, in fact, that you can probably call witnessing, “lucidity” as well. Quiet lucidity versus active lucidity.

Tart: Based on all the literature I’ve read and on my own experience of it, I would say that lucidity in a dream is an altered state of consciousness. Whether or not there is self-remembering in a lucid dream is an entirely separate dimension. In a lucid dream a person experiences a shift in the qualities of consciousness. So the way my mind is operating feels more like waking than sleeping, and includes factual knowledge: I’m actually in bed dreaming, still, or I remember how to operate this kind of equipment in real life so I can operate it in dreams. Lucidity brings an ordinary level of conscious knowledge into the dream, which in a sense is a higher state phenomenon. You, your ability, your freedom of operation throughout the dream world clearly goes up when it becomes lucid—when you know you’re dreaming.
Now, the kind of lucid waking I’m talking about, self-remembering, involves a big jump up from the ordinary waking state. So, you could have a lucid dream that did not involve self-remembering, but in theory (I haven’t done it and I don’t know anybody who has) someone who’s good at self-remembering could have an ordinary dream, turn it into a lucid dream, and still not be self-remembering. They could then begin to self-remember within the lucid dream itself and go up to another level.

Gackenbach: To paraphrase then: When you know you’re dreaming then either it follows or simultaneously you have full recall of your memories, you have volition and control at much higher level. Is that self-remembering or is self-remembering even beyond that?

Tart: Self-remembering is beyond that stage. Right now, here I am in the ordinary state not doing the process of self-remembering. Here in my ordinary state I have a certain vantage point with lots of knowledge, but my knowledge. My ordinary identity carries a framework, an emotional-cognitive framework, that organizes everything going on—what’s important to me, what’s not important. Things are being processed through my personality. That also happens in the lucid dream: your ordinary waking personality now becomes the processing center rather than the usual greatly “shrunken” dream personality center.
If I’m self-remembering, by contrast, when you ask me who am I, I could give you a conventional answer if I think that’s what you want to hear: all the facilities of ordinary waking consciousness are available. But the truth of who I am is that I’m not my personality anymore. It’s hard to express in words, but I am a process that can know. That process has a tremendous amount of freedom compared to myordinary personality. It’s far more open-minded, it has far more access to possibilities.

Gackenbach: Is there a sense of separateness?

Tart: “Separateness” is a poor word to use for this. It’s not like I’m standing behind myself. Or that I’m “detached” in the sense of not caring about what’s going on. I may be more vividly aware of ordinary experiences than I normally am. The ordinary world becomes a little more real. But simultaneously it seems it is just a particular flux of phenomena at this time. I’m not identifying with it.

Gackenbach: As I understand it, that’s what my colleagues at MIU call “witnessing.” It naturally emerges as a function of meditation. This is almost identical to the kinds of things you’re saying.

Tart: Possibly meditation does produce very similar results.

Gackenbach: Then in sleep, and specifically in dreams, how are these states the same or different? I’m beginning to wonder if you can’t be both lucid and witnessing or self-remembering simultaneously. Or one or the other.

Tart:You lost me.

Gackenbach: By way of explanation, let me tell you about this interview I had with this mathematics professor who’s been meditating for seventeen years and has very clear experiences. I think because he’s not a behavioral scientist, he’s able to communicate better, without jargon. He described how he conceptualizes the continuum from the stage of dream lucidity to the stage of witnessing. First he saw them in developmental sequence. The first step is consciousness; you know you’re dreaming. It’s minimal lucidity, as we would name it. The actor-observer roles change in the sequence. In lucidity you know you’re dreaming; the actor’s very dominant. The observer’s there but it’s not as dominant a role. Then, as you move into witnessing, the actor becomes more suppressed and the observer role more dominant.

Tart: So in a paradoxical way you lose the freedom to change things that occur in lucid dreams and you let the dream run passively again?

Gackenbach: Yes, the passivity is the big dynamic. Not only that, the dream begins to fade. You realize you’re dreaming—everything out there is my fantasy, is me. Everything goes very naturally. I’m not going to make it go away, but rather let it continue. You still have a self-representation of the body. That goes. You still have a representation of the self but it’s not a “physical” self. Then that goes. You’re left with awareness of awareness. Then you go into that and the experience opens again, but it is not “sensory” experience; rather it is conceptually based. So he talks about living mathematical constructs at that point.

Tart: He probably goes to the world of Platonic forms. Where else—what would a mathematician’s idea of nirvana be—Platonic forms, formulas!

Gackenbach:He sees it as some kind of abstract algebra, that’s his area. It goes further. But after that, I had no idea what the guy was talkin’ about.

Tart:Let me distinguish two categories now in terms of self observation and self-remembering. One is what I’ve been describing to you. It’s very prominent in the Gurdjieff tradition, and the place it’s almost exclusively done is in the midst of ordinary life. We’re being bombarded with sensory impressions,we’re socially interacting, the phone could ring, there’s lots and lots of input. Now let’s operate on a model which I find works well for a lot of things, namely that the total amount of attention available to us is fixed, but we can divide it up. With self-remembering, instead of your attention becoming all absorbed in either outside events or the internal processes triggered off by them, you keep a part of it free to observe the rest. Instead of letting a hundred percent get lost in phenomena, you keep, say, ten percent in self-remembering. Paradoxically, this makes the other ninety percent more vivid, but at the same time, you’re not so trapped in the particulars of experience.
Now let’s look at Buddhist vipasana meditation, which I’m trying to learn to do well. In vipasana meditation you sit down in a place that’s extremely quiet compared to ordinary life. Nobody’s going to talk to you; there’s nothing you have to do. It’s a reasonably undisturbed place. You sit still. All the body stuff is greatly reduced. You just try to clearly observe whatever happens in your mind—you make no attempt to control it. There’s no good or bad thing you try for, there’s no control you exert. You just try to be clearly aware of whatever is happening. Now you’re doing something that’s much like self-remembering. But, in a sense, the “noise level” is way down, so instead of self-remembering where it’s all terribly agitated by external events, vipasana is self-remembering down here where there’s much less confusion. Thus you can begin to observe much subtler aspects of mental function. So this process, carried out from two different places, could lead to different things.
Now, let’s follow the vipasana meditation model. I may be sitting with my mind wandering (which is usually what happens, because it’s hard to do!) But then I focus for a moment, I’m paying clear attention to whatever sensations come and go in my body. There’s a line of sensations in my leg, e.g. it comes and goes. That starts to raise a thought and I see how the thought starts to rise. I watch the process but then it just fades. I’m tuning into the finer, subtler thought. Vipasana can become much deeper as your perception of a thought becomes finer and finer. It’s like you turn a microscope on your sensations, and, as you zoom and focus the microscope, the power gets higher and higher. There comes a point where, when you look at anything, it dissolves into nothing but vibrations. A friend of mine who’s a very experienced meditator describes it this way. Any sensation—a painful sensation, a pleasant sensation, whatever—that he looks at closely in this vipasana way dissolves into vibration. You can then reach a kind of psychological state where all the usual objects of the world we experience, including your body and your sense of self, just become vibratory waves. A lot of people would call that a highly enlightened state.

Gackenbach: But there’s still more.

Tart:Yes, I don’t think that’s the only way it can go. In the Tibetan tradition of Dzogchen meditation, that kind of thing can happen in meditation, and then you intentionally destroy it because you’re getting caught up in it, which is a form of subjectivity. If you become proficient, you’re able to simultaneously contact that incredibly expanded, nonverbal, holistic view of reality while in the midst and flux of everyday life, being good at living everyday life. So there’s various directions you can go in.

Gackenbach:I have talked about this at length with my colleagues at MIU, particularly the concept of the quiet, and the subtleties.

Tart:Let me give you a view of either lucidity or witnessing. It’s a totally relative view. There’s a continuum. At one extreme you are totally caught up in whatever’s happening. The other opposite end is that you are totally out of it. Now there are varying degrees of [lucidity along this continuum]. For instance, even simple animals make cognitive maps of their environment. In a sense, that’s a kind oflucidity. It may be a very mechanical kind of thing, like a conditioned response. But there’s a sense in which lucidity or witnessing gives us some perspective on experience while it’s happening. Even in ordinary consciousness we bring some perspective, some cognitive maps.
Self-remembering, which I’m talking about, introduces a new dimension. Self-remembering does not mean you have some point of view that you claim is higher. It means you exercise a bit of volition to try to be totally open to whatever is happening at the moment. It’s very different from all our ordinary acts of cognition using the conceptual tools already given you.

Gackenbach: So it’s passive?

Tart: No, no. Self-remembering is not passive. It’s definitely active in a sense that you must make a small effort to do it. It’s not automatic. It’s always a certain kind of effort. But it’s not the usual kind of effort. Usual efforts not only have force behind them, they have a direction and goal. Here the effort is simply to pay attention openly but not force it in any particular direction. I’m saying you can use “lucidity” or “witnessing” to describe two levels of an operation. You have immediate experience and another level of perspective on experience. This can be purely mechanically operated kinds of perspectives. But there’s another kind of lucidity or witnessing whose goal is the transcendence of all concepts, all dualities, all formulations and it involves simply an effort toward openness.

Gackenbach: It’s active in the sense of doing, it’s happening, and in the sense that there’s some effort. It’s passive in the sense that, if you start to act on what you’re experiencing, you lose the experience: mood making.

Tart: Now that’s an important difference. To me, looking at it from a Gurdjieff perspective, losing it means you haven’t learned how to do it very well. There are techniques that are essentially passive—more witnessing and the universe will be revealed to you, right? And there are techniques that bring full knowledge and are not totally passive; there are times that require action by you.

Gackenbach:That’s it exactly. According to my colleagues at MIU you take time to cultivate the state through meditation, but that for most of the day you go about your business. The self-remembering or witness perspective spontaneously emerges from time to time.

Tart: Is it supposed to happen by itself as a result of your meditation periods?

Gackenbach:Yes, you don’t force it.

Tart: This is a traditional model, but I don’t think it is completely adequate. Let me illustrate. Recently I was in a Buddhist group meeting and a woman there was complaining that after she’d been to a retreat for a couple of weeks, where she’d been so mindful, that it all faded within a few hours of going home! She just couldn’t be mindful at home. That’s a very common experience. Now the traditions usually say just keep up your meditation mindfulness practice, do your sitting every day and eventually it will start to transfer. Indeed, all of them admonish you to transfer it to everyday life, but, the classic Eastern traditions that I know actually don’t have much in the way of skillful means for transferring mindfulness to everyday life. They don’t have much technology for how you do it. The Gurdjieff tradition, on the other hand, by and large doesn’t teach people passive sitting meditation. It starts you right off practicing mindfulness in the midst of life. So I’m writing a paper for the Journal of Humanistic Psychology comparing these two traditions and suggesting some ways to take this mindfulness and start practicing it in situations closer to ordinary life. Then it’ll transfer to the everyday life we lead—it will give us “lucidwaking.”

##### II.B.3 A Conceptual and Phenomenological Analysis of Pure Consciousness During Sleep

###### CHARLES ALEXANDER

Maharishi International University, Fairfield, Iowa

While most accounts of “awareness” during sleep have focused on the phenomenon of “dream lucidity,” in this presentation I will discuss a qualitatively distinct state of consciousness beyond ordinary lucidity that can be experienced along with dreaming and deep sleep. This state is referred to in the ancient Vedic tradition as samadhi or “pure consciousness.” When this state is maintained during dreaming or sleep, it is said to serve as a silent “witness” or observer to these changing relative states.

Distinguishing Between Pure Consciousness and Dream Lucidity
Let us begin by distinguishing between ordinary lucidity and witnessing. Dream lucidity appears to involve a commingling of the ordinary waking state with the dream state. During the process of dreaming, it is as if the cognitive capacities of the ordinary waking state become activated, and one can now function volitionally from within the dream world. One’s awareness typically remains identified (or associated) with that of the dream ego, but an arsenal of additional waking state abilities are added (e.g., rational decision processes, memory of having been awake). In lucid dreaming, though one can now actively think about the fact that one is dreaming, one still remains relatively absorbed in the dream world.
In contrast, the experience of pure consciousness is said to totally transcend the activities of both ordinary waking and sleeping. Whereas dream lucidity is typically associated with an increase in cognitive processing and possibly somatic arousal, pure consciousness is described as a heightened state of content-free awareness accompanied by deep silence, a state in which all ordinary activity of thinking, feeling and perceiving has come to a complete rest, yet awareness remains wide awake within itself. What wakes up in lucid dreaming is the localized, active individual ego of the ordinary waking state, the bounded “I” of experience with which we typically identify—albeit now transported into a dream landscape. In contrast, what wakes up during witnessing is the silent, unified state of pure consciousness, said to lie at the basis of all active states of mind and changing states of consciousness. In this state, awareness becomes fully “self-referral,” capable of knowing itself directly without conceptual mediation of any kind. The boundaries of the active, localized self are transcended and awareness is said to become identified with a silent inner unbounded Self at the origin of mind, which is experienced as “I-ness,” “amness of “Being.” Maharishi describes this experience of the Self:
Self has two connotations: lower self and higher Self. The lower self is that aspect of the personality that deals only with the relative aspect of existence. It comprises the mind that thinks, the intellect that decides, the ego that experiences. This lower self functions only in the relative states of existence—waking, dreaming, and deep sleep The higher Self is that aspect of the personality which never changes, absolute Being [pure consciousness], which is the very basis of the entire field of relativity, including the lower self.
In “witnessing,” the Self becomes fully differentiated from and an observer to the changing states ofwaking, dreaming and sleep and the functioning of the localized self which is embedded in those states. Thus, unlike the typical lucid state in which the localized waking-state self can now function from within the dream, in witnessing, an unbounded Self silently observes from outside of the dream state.
According to Maharishi’s Vedic tradition, witnessing can become a constant reality experienced throughout the 24-hour waking/sleeping cycle and not just experienced during rare moments while dreaming. The goal of Transcendental Meditation (TM) is to provide systematic experience of the pure consciousness state. Maharishi explains:
The Transcendental Meditation technique is an effortless procedure for allowing the excitation of the mind to gradually settle down until the least excited state of mind is reached. This is a state of inner wakefulness with no object or thought or perception, just pure consciousness, aware of its own unbounded nature. It is wholeness, aware of itself, devoid of difference, beyond the division of subject and object—transcendental consciousness.
During this experience knower, known, and the process of knowing converge in one wholeness of experience. This is described as a self-referral state. Because there is only the awareness of awareness. You are aware that you are. There is no active processing of mental contents; it is just a state of pure “knowing-ness,” or being. It is a very gratifying kind of existential reconnection with your basic self. The goal of meditation, of the TM program, is to maintain this pure consciousness state outside of meditation. On the basis of the deep state of rest experienced during TM, tension and stress is released that otherwise blocks one from this silent experience of the Self. Gradually, over years of meditating, this pure consciousness begins to adhere to you, or you adhere to it, and you begin to maintain this silent state during waking, dreaming, and sleeping. Pure consciousness then functions as a witness to ordinary daily activity. You still may engage in ordinary thought, but the silent state is as a backdrop to active states of consciousness. The advantage of this silent state is that it is a state of complete harmony, peace, and inner fulfillment, and cannot be disrupted. Because it doesn’t get disrupted, you don’t lose this “inner lifeline” to Being within.
A substantial body of research has been conducted on the psychophysiological correlates of pure consciousness. Maharishi predicted that pure consciousness would prove to be a distinctive state of restful alertness qualitatively different from ordinary waking, dreaming and sleeping. On the one hand, a deep state of inner silence would be experienced. On the other hand, one is said to become increasingly alert or aware. Indeed, enlightenment is sometimes referred to as simply being fully awake. Thus, this state is said to have a dual character of being both very silent yet more awake, but not aroused. It is both together in one condition.
It has now been repeatedly shown that in the experience of pure consciousness during TM (as indicated by button pressing immediately after the experience) respiration rate often drops to virtually zero for as long as a few seconds up to minute. For some advanced practitioners of TM, their respiration is virtually absent for over half of their meditation. On the other hand, during these experiences, EEG alpha and theta power increased substantially. Also, EEG patterns became more “coherent”—i.e., brain waves (especially in the frontal and central regions), thus suggesting a simultaneous increase in alertness and functional integration.
Now that I have conceptually described the pure consciousness state and how it may differ from lucidity, let me provide some phenomenological descriptions of this state. I’ll begin with experiences of pure consciousness in isolation during experiences of TM, as reported by subjects. Their reports are bolsteredby the fact that they also displayed substantial periods of respiratory suspension and increased EEG coherence associated with these experiences. The first subject says,
When I experience pure consciousness, it is a state in which I am awake and aware, but not aware of anything except awareness itself. As I merge into the experience, outer-relatedness lessens and inner peace and self-sufficiency remains. It is not an intellectual experience. It is by far the most intimate and simple experience in my life.
A second experience:
I experience pure consciousness as a state of unboundedness and total ease and deep relaxation. There are no thoughts, no feelings, or any other sensations like weight or temperature. I just know I am. There is no notion of time or space, but my mind is fully awake and perfectly clear. It is a very simple and natural state.
This quote clarifies that this is “pure” in that it is content-free. There is no object of thought. It is not qualified by any particular thought or feeling. It is awareness awake to its own nature, but without any content. That is why the experience has been described as “being” or just “am-ness.” These experiences, of course, don’t just take place in meditators, they occur in non-meditators as well. The purpose of meditation is to stimulate more frequent occurrence of this experience. In “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey . . . ,” written by the nineteenth-century poet Wordsworth (1904 edition), a spontaneous experience of pure consciousness seemed to be described:
. . . —that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,—Until the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: . . .
This poem clearly describes the dual character of pure consciousness. He describes this experience of attention spontaneously settling down as it does during meditation, until the breath becomes “almost suspended.” Yet at the same time we “become a living soul.” We have begun to conduct research to determine if pure consciousness can be maintained outside of meditation—especially during sleep. In a pilot study of an advanced TM meditator who claimed to be having this witnessing experience of a serene inner state throughout waking, dreaming, and sleeping, we found when compared to the sleep of two lucid dreamers and a nonlucid dreamer, that this particular subject seemed to physiologically maintain a deeper state of rest. He had lower respiration rate, lower heart rate, and less REM density, but he also appeared to be alert and could signal from REM sleep, Stage I, and Stage II sleep with strong lateral eye movements. This suggests that he may be experiencing the restfully alert state of pure consciousness during sleep.
Through the efforts of Jayne Gackenbach and Robert Cranson we also now have some preliminary content analyses of the pure conscious experience during sleep. A very advanced group of meditators at an in-residence meditation facility in upstate New York filled out questionnaires on their frequency of experiencing three types of consciousness in sleep: lucid dreaming (which we defined as actively thinking about the fact that you are dreaming); witnessing dreaming (while dreaming you experience aquiet, peaceful inner awareness or wakefulness completely separate from the dream); or witnessing deep sleep (during dreamless sleep you experience a quiet, peaceful, inner state of awareness of wakefulness). These subjects were then required for validation purposes to provide a detailed description of these experiences. Gackenbach then performed a content analysis by first identifying categories that may discriminate among these experiences and then assigning the different experiences into each category. There were 55 lucid dreams, 41 witnessing dreams, and 47 witnessing in deep sleep experiences reported by these 66 advanced male meditators. The content categories showing distinctions between them are depicted in Table 1.
Most revealing of these categories was the one on feelings of separateness. In lucid dreaming only 7 percent of the cases were those in which people reported feeling separateness. In the witnessing dream experience, 73 percent of the cases spontaneously reported in their dream description that the dream went on, but they were separate from it. These reports are consistent with our conceptual descriptions of witnessing as involving the complete differentiation of pure consciousness from the dream state—functions as a silent witness completely distinct from or outside of the dreaming state.
Following are examples of maintaining the silent experience of pure consciousness along with but separate from the dream state: “Sometimes no matter what comes into the dream, I feel an inner tranquil awareness that is removed from the dreaming. Sometimes I may even be caught up in the dream but the inner awareness of peace remains.” Another example: “I watch it as it is going on separate from me There are parts, me and the dream, two different realities.” These are examples of this feeling of separateness.
Another category which is interesting is that of emotion. There seem to be positive emotions associated with all three states, but extremely positive emotion was reported more frequently for witnessing dreaming and witnessing deep sleep as were feelings of lightness. This is reminiscent of, according to Maharishi’s Vedic tradition, an experience of profound bliss or ananda experience of the inner Self or Being.
On the other hand, dream control was much more frequent during lucid dreaming than witnessing dreams. This is consistent with the claims that dream lucidity typically involves active information processes, manipulation of dream content. As it were, the “will” or volitional capacity of the individual ego can act on its thoughts and desires. This is in contrast to the experience of pure consciousness which is said to be one of complete inner fulfillment or contentment. The Self does not act, but silently observes the changes occurring within waking, dreaming, and sleep.
Also over half the time lucid dreaming was triggered by incongruent mental events in the dreams that appeared to stimulate or awaken intellectual or discriminative processes typical of the waking state. On the other hand, witnessing dreaming and sleep were virtually never triggered by such mental events. The most unambiguous criterion of witnessing is maintenance of pure consciousness even during deep sleep. Because lucidity involves active thinking and deep sleep is generally, although not always, without mentation, it is not surprising that lucidity (as typically experienced) drops out during deep sleep. However, after long-term practice, TM practitioners gradually begin to report experiences of “witnessing,” or maintenance of pure consciousness, even during dreamless sleep.
Here are a few examples:
It is a feeling of infinite expansion and bliss and nothing else First, it is like an abstract experience of bliss. There is no identity at all. Then I become aware that I exist, but there is no individual personality. Then I become aware that I am an individual, but no details of who, where, or what or when. Eventually these details fill in, and I might then wake up. Sometimes I’m lying there very quietly enjoying the silence, and then I will gradually become aware that I am snoring.
Another experience:
How do you describe an unmanifest experience? It has only happened a half dozen times in 15 years, but when it occurs, it’s crystal clear. Silence, wakefulness. Dark/clear and open. Silent/lively—like an amplifier turned on, but no sound. The experience fades as boundaries of dreams or waking state gather, gain definition and overshadow.
From the perspective of Maharishi’s Vedic Science, the significance of the experience of pure consciousness is that it provides the foundation for the development of stable higher stages of consciousness or “enlightenment.” Witnessing of deep sleep indicates that the inner wakefulness of pure consciousness is now beginning to be maintained even during the most extreme conditions of mental inertia—dreamless sleep. Indeed, according to Maharishi, the first stable higher stage of consciousness, termed “cosmic consciousness”—is defined as the maintenance of pure consciousness throughout the 24-hour cycle of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.
One final consideration, in the growth of the first stage of enlightenment, pure consciousness is said to become a silent observer or witness to the changing states of waking, dreaming, and sleeping. However, this development of inner self-sufficiency should not be confused with a state of compassionless detachment. In accordance with Erik Erikson’s injunction that identity provides the basis of intimacy, it is also when one establishes one’s ultimate inner identity, “Being” or Self that a truly profound foundation for intimacy with others is achieved. Unless you fully know who you are through the self-referral of Being, you are not in an ideal position to know and help others. The unbounded Self is classically described as “nonattached” not because it is withdrawn but because it can no longer be disrupted or overshadowed by the boundaries or changing values of thoughts, perceptions and actions. The blissful experience of inner Being thus provides a natural basis for sharing. The sharing of one’s happiness and inner resources with others.

##### II.B.4 Psychological Content of “Consciousness” During Sleep in a TM Practitioner

JAYNE GACKENBACH and WILLIAM MOORECROFT

Athabasca University and University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada; Luther College, Iowa

Gackenbach (1988) recently concluded a review of the research examining differences in content between lucid and nonlucid dreams. It covered two types of data, self-evaluations of the content by the dreamer, as well as content evaluations by independent judges. Both approaches were largely descriptive of the manifest level of content, although the self-evaluations involve some part of the latent content through the subjects’ need to describe their own experience.
She concluded that although there were differences between lucid and nonlucid dreams, lucid dreams were more like nonlucid dreams than they were different. However, she also noted that although the differences were few they were not due to chance variations but were consistent across a variety of studies.
Specifically, consistent differences from the self-evaluations research on content involve auditory and kinesthetic dream sensations and dream control as particularly characteristic of the lucid dream. Consistent with these self-observations are the findings from independent judges of dream lucidity as having more auditory and cognitive activities. Not evaluated in the self-observation studies, Gackenbach pointed out, was the role of characters. In the judges evaluations across samples, sex, and dream collection method, lucid dreams had fewer characters. Although other dreamer type differences emerged in the various studies, the most compelling differences are clearly in the auditory/cognitive domain. An experience related to the lucid dream experience is a continuation of consciousness from the waking state into the sleep state that claimed to be a key aspect of the experience of “Transcendental Consciousness,” which is developed by the practice of Transcendental Meditation (TM) (Banquet & Sailhan, 1974). This study investigated the psychological content of the dream experiences of a single advanced practitioner of TM who reported maintaining “Transcendental Consciousness” throughout the 24-hour cycle.
The state produced by TM practice is characterized by low levels of autonomic arousal and TM practitioners are discouraged from attending to their dreams. Since the possibly related state of “lucid dreaming” (i.e., related in that both states claim “consciousness” during dreaming) is associated with increased autonomic arousal (LaBerge, Levitan & Dement, 1986) and, as noted, meaningfully differs from nonlucid dreams, we addressed the question of whether experiences of “Transcendental Consciousness” would show dream content distinct from lucid or nonlucid dreaming.

Method
The TM subject (TMS) was a 28-year-old male who had been meditating for 5.8 years and received oneof the highest scores thus far recorded on an inventory designed to assess self reports of the attainment of higher states of consciousness (Stage of Consciousness Inventory (SCI); Alexander, Davis, Dillbeck, Dixon, Oetzel & Muehlman, in press). Further, he received low scores on the SCI scales which assess psychopathology and tendency to endorse misleading, grandiose sounding statements. During TM practice he displayed exceptionally high amplitude alpha spindles across all EEG channels and periods of respiratory suspension (Kesterson, 1985).
Four subjects, the TMS and three others, two who reported frequent lucid dreams and one who had never had a lucid dream, were studied in a sleep laboratory for two to seven nights. Standard polysomnograms (EEG, EOG, and EMG as well as pulse and respiration) were recorded. Prior to coming to the sleep laboratory all subjects kept dream diaries at home for a two week period. Midway through this period they were instructed to attempt the eye movement signaling task at home. Both lucid dreamers and the TM subject were able to do this task at home while the nonlucid subject could not.
During the sleep laboratory experience (which was a seven-night experience for the TMS and a two-night experience for all others), dreams were collected after each REM episode. As in Gackenbach’s content study first published in 1988, work diary and laboratory dreams were then content-analyzed using the Hall and Van de Castle (1966) system and a few additional scales (i.e., bizarreness, palpable sensations, balance and control). The TMS had 35 diary and laboratory collected “lucid” dreams to be analyzed (Group 1) while the two lucid dreamers had 12 diary collected lucid dreams (Group 2) and 21 diary and laboratory collected nonlucid dreams for analyses (Group 3). The nonlucid dreamer had 24 diary and laboratory collected nonlucid dreams (Group 4).

Results and Conclusion
One-way analyses of covariance were computed on 140 content scales from Hall and Van de Castle with number of words in the dream transcript as the covariate. The four groups of dreams compared were as noted above. All significant findings (means and Fratios) are portrayed in Tables 1 to 4.
As with Gackenbach (1988), the content analysis of lucid vs. nonlucid dreams for these four groups of dreams (two lucid groups and two nonlucid groups) were more alike than different. That is, only 27% of the analyses showed significant differences. However, this figure (38 significant differences) is considerably higher than what one would expect by chance alone. Consequently, although there are few differences they can not be accounted for by chance factors alone.
As to the nature of the differences, in 27 of the 38 significant findings the TMS had the lowest incidence. He had the highest incidence in only four scales (i.e., male characters; “old” modifiers; references to dream control; and sense of intellectual, emotional and body balance).
Consistent with the electrophysiological findings with this same TM subject (Gackenbach, Moorecroft, Alexander & LaBerge, 1987), he demonstrated both lower physiological arousal (even though he was able to signal with prearranged eye movements) and lower psychological “arousal.” That is, there were fewer thought elements in his sleep mentation experiences.

References

Alexander, C.N., Davies, J., Dillbeck, M., Dixon, C., Oetzel, R. & Muehlman, J.M. (in press). Higher stages of consciousness beyond formal operations: The Vedic psychology of human development. In C.N. Alexander, E. Oxford University Press.

Banquet, Jean-Paul & Sailhan, M. (1974, April). Quantified EEG spectral analysis of sleep and

Transcendental Meditation. Paper presented at the second European Congress on Sleep Research, Rome, Italy.

Gackenbach, J. (1988). Psychological content of lucid vs. nonlucid dreams. In J. Gackenbach & S. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. New York: Plenum.

Gackenbach, J., Moorecroft, W., Alexander, C. & LaBerge, S. (1987). “Consciousness” during sleep in a TM practitioner: Heart rate, respiration and eye movement. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Dreams, Arlington, VA.

Hall, C. & Van de Castle, R. (1966). The content analysis of dreams. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Kesterson, J. (1985). Respiratory changes during the Transcendental Meditation technique. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts, 1144, 334.8.

LaBerge, S., Levitan, L. & Dement, W. (1986). Lucid dreaming: Physiological correlates of consciousness during REM sleep. The Journal of Mind and Behavior: Special Issue: Cognition and Dream Research. 7(2&3), 251–258.

##### II.B.5 A Buddhist Perspective on Lucid Dreaming

###### TARAB TULKU XI

Copenhagen University, Denmark

Editor’s Note: Tarab Tulku, L.R.G.S, Dr.Phil., is a Tibetan lama, the eleventh incarnation of the Tarab Tulku. Tarab is an abbreviation of the much longer name of a monastery in Tibet. Tulku means “reborn.” He has been educated in Tibet at the University of Drepung Monastery, where he received the highest degree, Lharampa Geshe, in Buddhist philosophy and metaphysics, as well as in meditation disciplines (including Tantra). At present Tarab Tulku is the head of the Tibetan section of the Royal Library and of the Tibetan department of Copenhagen University. On the basis of his own profound experience and accumulated knowledge, Tarab Tulku has modified the original Tibetan Buddhist techniques and developed therapeutic methods adapted to Western approaches, still integrating the essence of the esoteric meditation practices of Tibetan Buddhism.

Within the Buddhist Tantric tradition there is great emphasis on using the dream state of being for developmental ends. There exists a special practice called “dream yoga,” which in the West has been presented as one of the “Six Doctrines of Naropa.” The dream yoga is a high meditation practice which is performed by the practitioner within the so-called lucid dream state.
However, working directly and consciously in the lucid dream state is not accessible to very many people. As the dream yoga methods are very strong and direct methods for development, I have committed myself to developing ways of dealing with dreams, which on the one hand provide training towards actual dream yoga practice—the practicing within the lucid dream state—and on the other hand can fruitfully be used to confront and dissolve problematic psychological structures more effectively than by dealing with these in the ordinary waking state. Therefore, it is appropriate to talk about two different levels of purposes, a surface level of psychological observance, and a more subtle level of spiritual observance.
Psychologically-oriented practices are concerned mainly with changing our general psychological structures with the purpose of decreasing our everyday problems in relation to self and others. In contrast, the spiritual observance level is a practice level mainly concerned with changing our existential existence, with the purpose of decreasing the distance between, and thus uniting, our rational and non-rational abilities, or our feminine and masculine energies, or our body and mind or substance and consciousness. By healing the gaps and finally uniting subject and object we break the dualistic determination and entrapment of our existence, thus entering into the nature of existence, the essential nature of the universe.
It should be noted that distinguishing these two practice levels is provisional. The two levels follow each other sequentially. One must solve one’s major problems on a psychological level before being able to successfully enter the more subtle spiritual level where changing one’s existential structures in relation to reality occurs.
One of the main concerns on a psychological level is to obtain a balance between our ordinarycoarse-rational contact with and/or interpretation of reality and a nonrational relation with reality. This balance can be obtained, and has traditionally within Buddhism been obtained, from two alternately used angles: 1. One can use methods to awaken and train the nonrational contact, whereby the coarse-rational contact naturally will be softened, and become less rigid and projective and thus more open and clear; or 2. One can use methods to directly reduce the coarse, rationally created reality, to touch upon and be able to perceive and appreciate a more direct and nonmanipulated relationship with reality, a step which in itself will further a nonrational contact with reality.
During the process of establishing a balance between our ordinary, coarse-rational and the nonrational contact with reality our psychological problems change as they are part and parcel of the coarse-rational creations.
In dealing with dreams, in the dream state in particular, we initially train the nonrational way of contacting reality, using our dream body/mind abilities. With this basis we deal with the dream object—and later again with the dream subject—in different ways, slowly breaking the coarse-rational beliefs as well as many other layers of our dualistic way of existence.
Before I talk about the way I work with dreams, I will briefly be concerned with the creation and dynamism of our ordinary way of being, i.e. the ordinary coarse-rational way in which we contact reality. For this purpose, the foundation of the Buddhist psychology of perception/cognition, characterized by “the five skandhas” is useful. This system describes our psychophysical dynamic being from the perspective of the meeting of subject and object. In other words it is a detailed breaking down of the moments of perception. We also need to concern ourselves with the question of why the dream state is particularly useful for our purposes. Finally, I will present how I find it useful to deal with dreams within the dream state and within the imaginary dream state—methods based on the traditional dream yoga practice.

The Coarse-Rational Way of Contacting Reality Elucidated Through a Presentation of the Five Skandhas

The first skandha relates the corporeality of the object in terms of the qualities of form/color, sound, smell, taste and tactility, and, the corporeality of the subject, in terms of our body and especially in terms of the physical sense organs and faculties. The first moment of contact or perception of the object, within the ordinary waking state, is through the functional dynamism of the first skandha, our physical body. Our five senses individually contact with the related qualities of the object. From the senses the sense impressions go to the five respective sense consciousnesses. Neither the senses nor the sense consciousnesses have intellectual abilities.
Immediately after the sense contact, the second skandha, the basic feeling-evaluation (Tibetan tsorba; Sanskrit vedana) which differentiates into attraction and rejection, sets in. The middle part of the “wheel of existence,” symbolized by a pig, a doe, and a snake, refers to lack of intrinsic awareness (Tibetan ma rigpa) and to this basic feeling differentiating attraction and rejection (Tibetan ‘dodchags for attraction, zhesdang for rejection).
The third moment of perception can roughly be described as the “taking in” of the sense-impressions byconsciousness. In the ordinary waking state the sense-impressions are not just “taken in” but, especially within our modern, Western, highly materialistic cultures, the sense-impressions are almost simultaneously “taken over” by a consciousness dominated by a coarse-rational approach. This leaves the person with very little if any conscious awareness of the pure sense-impressions.
The coarse-rational consciousness refers to the consciousness which establishes that the perceived object is in accordance with the stored image, and with the name/ connotations of similar, already perceived, objects. All this is created within a certain complex cultural/individual view of reality.
The image we create of an object has first been singled out of its natural inter-connectedness with the whole and given a name. This image, when it is first created, will most often come between oneself and future similar objects “perceived.” Therefore, instead of actually perceiving the object, in the ordinary waking state, we mainly perceive our already created image of a similar object, and seldom meet the object more intimately than that.
The naming/language part in itself is most useful. However, in the coarse-rational approach the name/language has a tendency to take over reality, i.e., we give the language more meaning than reality itself. Ontologically, we exchange reality with the map of reality.
Following the “taking in” or “taking over” of the sense-impressions by consciousness, the feeling-discrimination between attraction and rejection referred to above now arises. Pleasant feelings arise when the object in focus seems to nourish and/or protect our image of ourself, and unpleasant feelings arise when our image of ourself is endangered. The coarse-rational contact gives the direction for the feeling-evaluation of oneself and the feeling-evaluation increases one’s belief in the coarse-rational perception/cognition. In general, the feeling-evaluation has the last word in reality proof and in decisions.
When the feeling-evaluation of oneself in relation to the object thus arises, it enhances the further building of a coarse-rational interpretation of the object. For instance, if one first evaluates the object as good and supportive of oneself, one naturally approaches and contacts more or less solely its “positive” sides. If, however, one first evaluates the object as confronting or undermining with regard to one’s image of oneself, one’s interpretation and contact is skewed toward its negative aspects. This description may sound trivial, but it has a great impact on our perception/cognition of reality.
Due to the dynamism between the coarse-rational interpretation and the feeling-evaluation of the object, the different emotions accordingly arise. Here we enter the domain of the fourth skandha, the skandha pertaining, among other things, to mentation/emotion. In this way, we create our coarse-rational emotional reality, which we automatically and more or less subconsciously superimpose of the actual sense impression of the object in focus. This, our creation of reality, is to a great extent fictional, and has often very little in common with the basic “pure” sense-reality.
The fifth skandha, the aggregate pertaining to our basic, consciousness energy refers to the main essence of being. This rnam-shes type of consciousness energy is underlying and gives energy to any psychological/mental function. That is, any kind of perception depends on the rnam-shes basic consciousness energy; the sensing, the coarse-rational perception/cognition, the feeling-evaluation, the emotions, etc. If we take away all the above mentioned psychological/mental functions of the first four skandhas, the consciousness energy as such is still maintained, continuing in and throughout all other states of being. Any of our mental/physical acts pertaining to the first four skandhas leave bag-chags,mental imprints in the basic psychophysical energy of consciousness. These are carried through into any other state of being, for instance into the dream state of being, from whence they again emerge, being part of the manifest dream.
The coarse-rational, perception/cognition of reality is thus, as pointed out above, not “pure,” but gives us a projected view of reality, which always is mixed up with our beliefs, fears, self-protective tendencies, emotional states, etc.
In the beginning of this paper, the importance of first obtaining a balance between the coarse-rational and the nonrational relation with reality was stressed. I referred to “a state of being in relation with reality,” which is not so corrupted by the coarse-rational approach, but is in closer connection to the basic psychophysical energy of consciousness, that is, closer to the actual nature of being.
In order to diminish and break coarse-rational creations, we have to use an appropriate kind of consciousness, which works in a different manner. For our purpose we have different natural states: the deep meditation state, the dream/bardo state or the deep sleep/death state of being.

Why the Dream State Is Particularly Useful for Psychological As Well As Spiritual Observations

The dream state is useful for our purposes due to its subtle qualities. In psychologically changing ourselves, it is stronger and more effective to work with our difficulties from a level of “being,” which circumvents the coarse-rational domination —as our psychological problems most often are bound up with or are part and parcel with the coarse-rational approach to reality—and also circumvents the limitations of our contact with reality due to our bondage within the rough physical body. If we want to progress in a spiritual direction, change ourselves existentially, change the relation between subject and object towards their unity, then one must transcend both types of limitations.
As we have just shown, our ordinary perception/cognition has a limited contact with the object. This is manifest in different ways. First of all, the perceptive/cognitive process of our ordinary waking state is strongly dispersed. The actual perception through the five distinct senses, though they can have direct contact with the five object qualities correlating with the senses, have no unity in themselves and no intellectual abilities. Further, the coarse-rational consciousness, belonging to the sixth-sense consciousness, has no direct perceptive tools by itself. It has to rely on the sense impressions of the five physical senses and the five sense consciousnesses, on top of which it has a strong tendency to create its own individual reality, differing radically from the ordinary “surface reality” as such. Secondly, the perception/cognition is bound within the physical body and limited accordingly, i.e., it is space- and time-limited.
In the dream state, as well as in the deep meditation state, perception and cognition are united. The sense-impressions are not functionally distinct. They are not dependent on the physical sense organs, but operate directly from within the sixth-sense consciousness. That is to say, the five sense consciousnesses and the sixth-sense consciousness operate naturally in union in the dream/meditation states of being—implying a natural basis for uniting body/mind and subject/object. In general, within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, body and consciousness always need to work together. A body doesn’t work without a consciousness, and a consciousness doesn’t work without a body.
In the dream state and deep meditation state, we also have/are a body. However, the dream body and thebody in the deep meditation state, often named the subtle body, are not of coarse physical nature, but are energy bodies, and have therefore the ability to go beyond the ordinary limitations and bondage of the physical body, i.e. beyond space and time fixations.
An energy body can be characterized as a unity of the basic energy of our physical body and the basic mental energy of consciousness. In the ordinary waking state we naturally also have the energy body, but we are normally unaware of it. In general, we only use our coarse physical body in cooperation with our coarse-rational consciousness, in which state our physical and mental aspects of being are strongly separated.
In any Tantric meditation, we try to awaken and train an energy body—for example, through awakening the energy in the chakras, etc. In the Six Doctrines of Naropa there is a specific Tantric practice where you train the “illusory body” (Tibetan sGyu-lus). The illusory body is a very subtle energy body, which can be established through deep meditation. Through the sGyu-lus practice one can leave the rough physical body, enabling one to use the subtle body without interference. However, it takes a long time and is very difficult to be able to awaken and train the sGyu-lus from the waking state of being. In general, when we try to awaken and train our energy body from the waking state, the physical body constantly interferes. It is very difficult not to take notice of the physical body, as we are used to identifying with and greatly caring about it.
However, in the dream state we have already parted from the rough physical body and we naturally have an energy body (the dream body). Because the dream state naturally occurs in every sleeping period, the Tantrics therefore make use of the dream state in order to develop and practice use of the subtle body. However, though our more subtle abilities are naturally present in the dream state, we are ordinarily, in this state, still dominated by our normal, coarse-rational and dualistic views and beliefs of separation between body and consciousness. So in order to be aware of and be able to use the abilities of the dream state, we need to train our dream body and dream consciousness. We will now turn to this training.

Dreamwork Within the Dream State and Within the Imaginary State of Being—Methods Based on the Traditional Dream Yoga Practice

Preliminary to dream yoga, the practitioner must be acquainted with the dream world, remembering dreams and having clear dreams. For psychological reasons it is also very important to remember one’s dreams. In the waking state we reject repressed conflicts and fears which we find difficult to deal with. However, these conflicts and fears, among all acts pertaining to the first four skandhas, leave imprints in the basic psychophysical energy of our consciousness, and reappear in the manifest dream in order to be lived through in this level of being. I find that living through psychological difficulties is the natural psychological function of dreams.

Stage One

The first stage of dream yoga is “holding the dream.” This stage implies the training of lucid dreaming—to know the dream is a dream while dreaming.
In order to experience lucid dreams whenever desired—not just at random—the practitioner has to train her will power to be able to go consciously into the dream state. Also she needs to awaken and balance her subtle energies.
Roughly we can talk about three “chakra” energies. The qualities of the chakra energies can be respectively expressed and distinguished in the following way:
1. An active type of energy, the rational-intellectual, the birth-creation, male type of energy.
2. A nonactive, nonoutgoing type of energy, nonrational, like the Death energy, which is female. The

Death-consciousness is the subtlest form of consciousness. 3. The third energy type balances between the active and nonactive.
People who mainly use the intellect or rational energy while asleep have to use methods of first getting into the nonrational (Type 2) energy. Getting into the non-rational energy on the threshold of sleep has different effects in the dream state, among which the most important for now are: 1. The sleeping state comes at rest and will therefore function naturally, fulfilling its function, i.e., the mental imprints (which for the reason of our mental health/healing need to come out and be lived through or worked through in the dream state); 2. Through nonrational energy one can develop lucidity and train to use one’s powers in the lucid dream state.
However, when the dream state is at rest and the will-power created, the practitioner needs to get more into the active (Type 1) energy in order to create the clear dream and in order to be more consciously aware in the dream state experiencing the lucid dreaming.
But if the practitioner gets too much into active energy, she will wake up. She therefore needs to hold a fine balance between the non-active and the active energy, using the Type 3 energy in order to stay in the lucid dream, neither waking up nor falling back into the ordinary dream flow.

Stage Two

The second stage is “mastering the dream.” In this stage, knowing the dream is a dream while dreaming, the practitioner develops his own power of using his dream body with volition. This enables him to deal actively with the dream object in a way, which is similar to the way we deal with the object while awake. The first step in obtaining the power of mastering the dream body is to consciously be the dream body, as ordinarily we are being our physical bodies. Being the dream body still requires training the practitioner how to use it. He needs to get all the senses to work properly and to be able to move the dream body at will.
Next the practitioner trains his willpower through the dream body in order to further investigate that which captures his interest. When this step is mastered he has the ability to acknowledge disturbing psychological structures emerging in the dream, and further, he has the ability to work directly in the dream state with them.
In this context, I will mention some methods the practitioner can use to work directly with fear when confronted with negative aspects in the dream scene (the dream object), and discuss how/why these methods work. The practitioner is advised never to flee the negativity, but to either fight it, or better still, to let the negativity destroy himself. In other words, unite with negativity. In order to understand why these methods work, we must understand the dynamic between negativity and the subject beingconfronted by it. Here we have to reach back to the basic psychology presented earlier under the third skandha, where we found that pleasant feelings arise in contact with the object when the object seems to nourish and/or protect our image of ourself, and unpleasant feelings arise when our image of ourself is endangered. Thus, within my interpretation and experience, the negativity frightening the practitioner in the dream is a picture/representation of the practitioner’s fear of having his self-image destroyed. If a practitioner flees a negativity, he misses the opportunity to work with his self-image and with the fear of having it destroyed. Instead, through this action he manifests his self-image even further. Secondly, if the practitioner fights that which will destroy his self-image, he creates a feeling of being protected in himself, and he will therefore feel stronger both in the dream, and also, it would seem, in waking reality. Thirdly, the practitioner can let a negativity destroy himself in the dream, i.e. he can unite with the negativity. When a negativity destroys the dream subject, it destroys that which the practitioner identifies with and therefore wants/needs to protect, his self-image. However, when this is destroyed the practitioner goes beyond this image of himself and reaches a more authentic layer of his being. No longer identifying with the image, there is nothing to maintain the game of fear and negativity, which is why there no longer is any fear or negativity. The practitioner has united himself with his fear and negativity. Through this act, it seems to me, he has resolved underlying psychological problems.
Having obtained the ability to “master the dream” it is possible for a practitioner to do many different and possibly unusual things within the dream. If, for instance, the practitioner wants to understand certain things, it could be within the sciences or within philosophy, psychology, the arts, he can—through various methods—contact or tune into “energy-lines” of the knowledge he wants to acquire. The dream state gives special possibilities to do so, due to its naturally stronger unity between body/mind and subject/object.

Stage Three

The third stage is “changing the dream.” I mentioned above that the core point in the dream yoga was to break or go beyond our dualistic way of existence. In this stage the practitioner is supposed to start directly breaking some of our strongest beliefs: the belief in the solidness and absoluteness of the object, the belief in our separateness from the object, the belief in time linearity and space fixation. Thus, in order to change the dream object, a practitioner has to train herself to go within the will power of her dream body/mind, contacting the basic structuring energy through which she can contact the dream object of the same energy level. On this very subtle structuring level of being, there is a correspondence between the energy of the subject and the object, through which direct contact is possible. Through this direct energy contact the practitioner can change the object, and/or can create objects at will.
In order to learn how to go into this subtle structuring level of being, the practitioner is traditionally instructed to use different deity-meditations in the dream state. However, to use these, certain initiations are required. When the practitioner can tune into this subtle structuring energy of the subject and the object, and use it for changing the object, she is breaking the ordinary natural laws of separateness. After obtaining this ability, a practitioner is able, by her will power and unity abilities, to transcend ordinary space and time limitations.
When the practitioner was working with the dream object, she had to work from her more rational/active chakra energy side, still keeping a balance in order not to awake from the dream state. But approaching the training of the unity abilities of subject/object, the practitioner is advised to work more through the nonrational, nonactive, feminine energy side.
As I have mentioned before, different levels of imprints, of more or less problematic observances, give rise to the main part of the dream. Having sufficiently mastered the dream, the practitioner naturally and spontaneously does seem to know which method to use in successfully dealing with dream appearances, and through these with the underlying consciousness energy. These needed to come out to be lived or worked through. After having mastered the methods of changing dream appearances, the practitioner can now change unwanted, unpleasant dream situations or her dream being. This act seems to have a direct healing impact on the underlying psychological difficulties associated with her waking life.

Stage Four

The fourth and last stage of dream yoga is to “merge with the unity of the subtle body/mind.” Here the practitioner is no longer working with the dream object/appearances. He now works directly through the unity of the subtle feminine and masculine energies of his dream subject, going beyond dream appearances. From this state of being, which is closely connected with the above mentioned state of “the illusory body,” the practitioner works directly with his relationship to the waking state reality, also breaking the ordinary natural laws of the reality of the waking state.

Dream Reliving

As mentioned in the beginning, it is not so easy to traverse the steps of knowing the dream is a dream, being able to create lucid dreams at will, or going consciously into the dream state of being.
Instead of working directly in the dream state, I have found it useful for the practitioner first to work with the same methods in the imaginary dream state of being. The imaginary dream state is a deeply relaxed state from which the practitioner enters a recalled dream with which she wishes to work. However, it is much more effective to work with the dream from the dream state than to work with the recalled dream from the imaginary dream state. The dream state is more subtle than the imaginary dream state. The imaginary dream state is more easily influenced by the view of the coarse-rational consciousness. However, psychologically speaking, if the practitioner is able to enter the imaginary state and not be disturbed or influenced by the coarse-rational view, then it seems fruitful for her to train and apply the dream yoga methods in the imaginary dream state.
To advance on the spiritual levels, i.e., existentially changing the dualistic way of existence, breaking the natural laws, etc., it is, of course, difficult to work from the imaginary dream level due to the possible interference of the ordinary coarse-rational dualistic view. However, some progress certainly takes place when the methods are properly used.
In general, it should be clear that any practice towards awakening and developing the subtle energies of body/mind, whether through the imaginary dream state, training the imaginary dream state or training the chakra energies, has a great impact on the ability of a practitioner to create clear dreams, and to further the dream power necessary for creating lucid dreams at will, and to work directly with the dream appearances in the dream.

References

Ajitamitragupta (1981). The Tibetan Tripitaka, D.G. edition, no. 2832: Rmi-lam dri-ma med-pa bsgom-pa. Dharma Press USA. [Note: Provides information on Rmi-lam bsgom-pa, the “Dream Yoga.”]

Dharmakirti (1981). The Tibetan Tripitaka, D.G. edition, no. 4210: Tshad-ma rnam-hgrel gyi tshig-lehur byas-pa (The Tibetan translation of Pramanavarttikakarika.) Dharma Press USA. [Note: Provides information on ‘Du-shes (the rational/coarse-rational consciousness) and mNgon-sum (the nonrational consciousness with respect to direct perception of the yogi mind).]

Dignaga (1981). The Tibetan Tripitaka, D.G. edition, no. 4204: Tshad-ma kun-las btus-pahi hgrel-pa (The Tibetan translation of Pramanasamuccayavrtti). Dharma Press USA. [Note: Provides information on ‘Du-shes (the rational/ coarse-rational consciousness) and mNgon-sum (the nonrational consciousness with respect to direct perception of the yogi mind).]

rGyal-tshab dar-ma rin-chen (1974–1975). Tson-kha pa’s collected works, vol. ca: Rnam-hgrel gyi bsdus-don, Thar-lam gyi de-ńid gsal-byed. Printed in Barasasi, India. [Note: Provides information on ‘Du-shes (the rational/coarse-rational consciousness) and mNgon-sum (the nonrational consciousness with respect to direct perception of the yogi mind).]

Tson-kha pa (1979). Tson-kha pa’s collected works, vol. ta: Zab-lam na-rohi chos-drug gi sgo-nas hkhrid-pahri rim-pa, yid-ches gsum Idan & Na- rohi chos-drug gi dmigs-skor lag-tu len tshul bsdus-pa. New Delhi, India. [Note: Provides information on Rmi-lam bsgom-pa, the “Dream Yoga,” and the sGyulus, the “Illusory Body.”]

### Section C: Mystical and Divine Experiences

##### II.C.1 Differences Between Lucid and Nonlucid Ecstatic Dreaming

###### ELINOR GEBREMEDHIN

Berwyn, Pennsylvania

In 1976, after a few years of occasionally dreaming lucid dreams which I did not differentiate from other dreams, there came a lengthy dream that announced itself as distinctive while I was dreaming it. Not only did I appear to myself to be distinctly “conscious” but the character of this consciousness was permeated with an ecstatic feeling of balance which changed my conception of what I could be in waking life, as well as in dreaming. Even though this dream was not the first one in which I made comments that made me appear to be aware that I was dreaming, it was the first one in which my dreaming “I” was initiated into a sharp awareness of a new state, and new possibilities for conscious development.
It was the distinctive balanced quality of the ecstatic element which particularly marked this dream as different than all its predecessors. The lucid ecstatic experience had a holistic clear-minded joy that was unlike the vibrant but mindless joy of nonlucid “high” dreams. Since it was new, I had no vocabulary to distinguish this kind of joy from all the other kinds I had thought were the sum total of what was possible. The following excerpts from the original write-up shows what a challenge it was to explain this experience to myself.

Four Judges In A Ball Court (August 8, 1976)
Dreamed I was walking down a corridor into a “basketball court” with tiled walls. There was a narrow walkway above the walls, and no bleachers for an audience, so later, when I woke, I realized it really looked more like a swimming pool. In the dream I assumed it was a basketball court.
Abruptly, with a feeling like the pop of a bubble breaking, the nature of my awareness changed from the usual dreaming kind to something like the normal everyday type of awareness, except that I was still asleep and dreaming. For some reason, this was delightful. There was a certain unmixed clarity of mind, as if all my thoughts and feelings were in their proper places, and I was conscious in the way I really ought to be in the daytime, all the time.
“I’m awake,” I said out loud (in the dream) and just the clarity of the sensation of being conscious made me ecstatic. I went and ran my hands over the tiles on the wall; they were very hard, very smooth, and exquisitely cool. I was very interested to see how REAL they seemed. There was absolutely no confusion in my mind that I was dreaming, and yet somehow I was awake without having departed from the dream state. So it was fascinating to me how my mind had conjured up this wall that felt so real to my dream fingers.
Then I turned and saw four men sitting around a card table, dressed in black robes like judges. [There were a few interchanges, and then the chief judge asked,] “How is she doing?” to one with a book.
“She must be doing all right, because she is still here,” was the reply. Whereupon the chief judge disappeared, leaving his empty clothes sitting there in the chair
“What’s that supposed to mean—that you’re full of hot air?” I said, very exasperated. Then the whole group disappeared, card table and all. This startled me, and I felt as though my consciousness was slipping back into ordinary dreaming, even though I felt I had “passed the test” and would be allowed to stay this way (i.e., lucid). I went unsteadily over to the side of the court and felt the tile wall, still cool and hard. This steadied me, and I said, “I guess this dream is still holding up.” After running my hand over the wall a little longer to make sure, and waiting for something to happen, I got bored and decided to explore.
[Several lucid episodes followed ]
This excerpt from the “Four Judges” dream contained many features characteristic of lucid dreams that were to follow over the next fourteen years. Among them was a distinct sense of “shift” (like a bubble popping) or an image of delineation (door closing, window opening, stepping down a stair) that divides the previous sleeping or dreaming state from the lucid state; a leap of joy followed by an intense sense of enjoyment of quite ordinary objects and situations; much conjecturing about everything “without” and “within”; much curiosity and desire to experiment; the exercising of choosing and judging abilities usually associated with waking consciousness; vivid tactile sensations, especially cool sensations; lulls in the plot which required me to take the initiative in order for the dream to get moving again; a strong, relatively effortless grip on my sense of identity, and especially, a struggle to maintain “balance” (sometimes on bicycles or motorcycles) and move with the flow, instead of getting “upset.” The most distinctive element, however, was that these dreams often included an ecstatic experience of a new type. Up to that point, I had always associated ecstatic experience with an opening of the “heart” and a thoughtless kind of merging with something “out there” that was felt to be intensely beautiful. The focus was on the wonderful or beautiful thing that was “out there.” The ecstatic experience that was distinctly lucid combined a similarly heartfelt but somewhat less intense emotion with very clear mental activity and no loss of identity or ability to act in a variety of situations. Though less intense emotionally, it felt more exquisite, “higher,” and less likely to burn out, and there was a substrata or background of self awareness.
Both nonlucid dreaming and waking ecstatic experiences up to that point had always been associated with a passive attitude of taking it all in—to the point where “it” filled me—so plot, action, reasoning, identity, or anything else that required even a partial self awareness tended to destroy the ecstatic state. Perhaps this is the reason that most of my experiences have occurred while intensely absorbed playing complex music, or during childhood, or while dreaming; at other times, my waking ego has had enough energy to unbalance the merger.
In nonlucid dreams something out there seems to be beautiful in itself and I disappear into it, participating in the beauty which “it” has. It does not occur to me to recognize that “it” is something which I have created in every sense of the word, since it is an image in a dream. In lucid dreams, “I” am ecstatic and all of that “out there” is a dream which I can enjoy no matter what it is, because I have come together in the right way. I know what I am really doing (i.e., dreaming), and it is my dream. It is not because “it is beautiful” but because “I can experience things (almost anything) as beautiful.” After the ecstatic experience of the “Four Judges” initiated me into a sense of the lucid dream state as being important, without explaining exactly why it was, I began to notice these dreams—whether I liked it or not! After a few years passed, I had discovered that lucidity and ecstasy came in several related guises. First, lucidity itself felt like some type of laid-back ecstatic state so that even if the dream was frustrating, boring, anxious, or even nightmarish, there tended to be a leftover feeling of elation the next day simply because of having functioned in a lucid manner, however briefly. Some dreams just had a wonderfully “clear” feeling to them; only a few rose to the level of being really “high,” or ecstatic as the Four Judges dream had been.
Most of the dreams that had distinctly “high” episodes fit a pattern. The “high” most commonly flared upat recognizing that I was lucid, although in the beginning I used other labels for this recognition, like “conscious” and “aware.” Since many of my lucid dreams start out with simply realizing my state of mind, rather than deducing it from some anomaly, many lucid dreams started out with the ecstatic peak right at the beginning, or close to the beginning. The intensity might fade after a bit, but, unlike waking life experience, it tended not to completely disappear . . . that is, as long as I remained lucid.
Furthermore, I did not stand around just being ecstatic, but usually ecstatically participated in the plot which means the write-ups don’t adequately portray the ecstasy as a background.
As it turned out, most of the lucid dreams I had over the fourteen years that followed the initiation dream of the Four Judges, were much shorter. During this earlier period of naive spontaneity, before I had heard about lucid dreaming research, more than half of the lucid dreams started out with or included at least a few moments of the unified ecstatic state of the first dream. It was clear that a lift of the heart combined with a sense of balanced, clarified mental activity was triggered by the recognition that I was lucid, not by something beautiful “out there.”

Hanging In There

What makes me able to remain lucid and ecstatic over a long time in a dream, once it has started? The answer to this question is still not clear to me, although the dream-making component of my mind often sets the stage for what will happen at the beginning by means of images of balance. Intentional review and practice in waking life appears to help induce the type of lucidity with low-level background-ecstatic characteristics, but what calls up and maintains the really high highs is a mystery to me. Saying that a heartfelt response combined with clear thinking and steady balance are characteristic ingredients does not help me call up the heartfelt response, or steady me when I feel uncertain. Compare, for instance, the following three dreams, which are arranged in order of how “high” they went. The first dream collapsed as soon as I encountered my sister in the second scene, whereas the other two continued over a number of apparently unrelated but continuously lucid episodes.

My Sister Has Holes In Her Socks (October 28, 1976)
Dreamed I was walking up the walk toward a big Victorian house, with my youngest daughter, age four, following me. I opened the front door and pop! I was suddenly aware—feeling fully conscious again like in the daytime, but still without leaving the dream. I felt a tremendous lift in spirits, but stepped forward very cautiously, because for some reason my grip on this state of mind seemed fragile. I felt that if I didn’t walk very carefully . . . I would fall back into regular dreaming I put one foot in front of another in a line so as “not to jiggle the dream . . .” [but shortly I awoke in the next scene].

Honored By An Iris (July 15, 1984)
. . . [After several nonlucid episodes] I stood still and looked down this path [a short-cut through a swamp], listening to the wind in the reeds, and reflected. Then I backed off and turned around with a sense of patience, so as to take a longer way home where I was less likely to get mired in mud.
Immediately, I was riding a bicycle down the upper hall of a school. I approached a wide staircase, and heard beautiful music coming up. I parked the bicycle, and went to hear it. As soon as I set foot on the stairs, I became fully lucid, simultaneously pervaded with a large, solid happiness. Everything was so real-seeming and clear, and there was such a sense of immediate contact with my environment, that for a moment I doubted I was dreaming, and in the next moment wondered if I might be on the verge of physically waking up. I went down the wide staircase, happily drinking in my surroundings, but at the same time being very very careful not to stumble and fall [because I didn’t want to do anything that would wake me up].
I sat down in the audience and heard an unfamiliar piece of string music. “I wonder, does this mean I made this piece of music up myself, or have I just heard it once before, so it is in my unconscious memory even though I can’t remember it?” I asked myself . . . [and went on to several more lucid episodes].

Jumping High On the Pier (May 15, 1984)
Dreamed that I was riding a two-wheeled vehicle like a motorcycle or bicycle, toward a pier, and I had to navigate very very carefully and attentively over a pile of dirt and debris in the way. I did so, feeling very clear-headed. I came to a halt, took a deep breath of the lovely clear air, and knew with a deep steady joy that I was dreaming. I looked around and saw a deep blue sky with a few white clouds, and sparkling water, like a bay at the edge of an ocean, and a quaint waterfront scene, like a cozy New England resort.
Everything was very clear; my seeing was completely without effort, and I looked around for a few moments just savoring the sparkling clarity and my own sense of being whole and solidly there.
I felt so good to be having this kind of dream that I jumped high, high into the air several times, and landed perfectly balanced, like a dancer. I felt very sure of my footing, and full of a solid confidence, the way I feel when doing something I have had a lot of practice in. Then I was walked into the quaint town . . . [and several more lucid episodes followed].
Obviously, the sense of certainty in the second and third dreams was a key ingredient to maintaining length, but this is not saying much. The initiation dream of the Four Judges had this sense of certainty even though I had never been fully aware in my dreams before, so why would the feeling of steadiness disappear and reappear from one dream to another over the years? I have no answer to this, other than to conjecture that there may be a physical rather than a psychological factor to the issue of “balance” [Editor’s Note: this was originally published before the writer had read Jayne Gackenbach’s research on the relation of balance and lucidity].

Nonlucid Ecstatic Dreams

For a period of a little more than a year before the initiating lucid dream of the “Four Judges,” I had periodically had ecstatic nonlucid dreams which were different from lucid highs, and ordinary “happy” dreams. They were not only intense, but they also included a distinctive “vibrant” sensation, and a sense of merging and resonating with whatever it was that had suddenly seemed so beautiful. These features made me feel they were mystical in some sense.
Regardless, there were only a few of them. For the most part, they disappeared as a separate type after the onset of lucid dreaming. They probably fit the conventional conception of an ecstatic state better than lucid dreams do. As Table 1 shows, there are a surprising number of differences between lucid and nonlucid types.

Sparrows Dancing On The Water (May 25, 1975)
Dreamed I was walking though a hilly wooded green area, and came to a beautiful lake in a clearing. The day was lovely. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and the air was comfortably cool.
I looked into the clear waters of the lake and saw a dozen or so sparrows sleeping in the bottom of the lake. As I watched, one woke up, floated to the surface, and began dancing on its toes. Instead of there being spreadout bird-like feet, each of the sparrow’s feet came down to a single toe, in a shape like that of a dancer’s toe slipper. Although sparrows are pretty drab, and this kind of a foot on a sparrow sounds grotesque, the bird’s dance immediately became absolutely exquisite to me. I was totally caught up in it, so there seemed to be nobody or nothing left that wasn’t part of the beauty that vibrated out of the dancing bird. The dance was stately, graceful, very composed; my feelings danced with every movement of the bird. The luminous sense of dancing seemed to go on for a long time. It wasn’t that I thought of dancing, or knew the bird was dancing, or saw the bird dancing in the dream . . . it was as if the dancing happened completely everywhere. Every element of the dream turned into the dance, the trees, the clear lake, and my own feelings. It’s hard to convey this.
When it finished the dance, the bird sank down and went back to sleep. Immediately, another one woke up and did the same thing. As soon as it broke the surface and began to dance, I was totally charmed again, and my attention, feelings, vision, everything, vibrated in a slow, cool, lovely dance—a kind of steady ecstasy, except “ecstasy” gives the wrong impression of rising to a peak and then crashing afterwards. The dance of the birds was so quiet and unhurried
Sparrows are not usually thought of as images of power, but this is one of the most memorable nonlucid dreams I have ever had. Like the “Eyes In The River” quoted later, the sparrows themselves were like the movement of individual thoughts rising up and falling back into unconscious levels of the mind. However, I don’t really care what they might represent. Like most of the ecstatic dreams, it was not the meaning of the dream that remained with me, but the seductive nature of the experience itself. I wanted to relive it, or at least remember its ecstatic flavor, not decode it and dig out a message. The message felt glued to the envelope.
Two more examples of the nonlucid type follow, both of which have a more deistically-oriented content, but not much difference in flavor. In the second dream, the usual sense of “vibrant” natural imagery was translated into experiences of reverberating sounds.

Into The Boiling Sun (May 17, 1976)
Dreamed that . . . [a transparent] door let me out into a beautiful green countryside in the early evening. There were rolling hills, lush greenery, farmland, trees all with a kind of shimmering beauty that took hold of me and seemed to flow in and around me. I walked down a straight road with all this beauty to the right and to the left. Straight ahead was an even more gripping sight: the evening sun had grown huge and red, hanging just above the horizon. It seemed to shimmer and shift and boil in the sky with great intensity, sending a beautiful but fierce shimmering light down on the landscape, which in turn sent up its own beautiful shimmering waves of beauty.
I walked with unaverted eyes straight down into the sun.

Glory Song (June 20, 1988)
Dreamed I bought school land as an investment, and then thought maybe I should sell it and invest in something else. It had a day care center on it . . . [after several changes of mind], I came into the day care center and saw that one of the children was the Christ child. He was surrounded by a number of other children.
|Then there was a big sound, not like an imagined dream sound, but like an actually heard sound from the waking world reverberating through the dream, of a HUGE choir of men’s voices, singing that chorus that starts “Glory, glory, resounds on high, voices of love, echo above; Choirs of angels their adoration show . . .” and so on (I forget the composer). The sound, a huge marvelous sound actually heard in the dream, filled up my mind, my body, my bones, until it became what I was thinking and feeling, shifting me away from all that think-think-think that had been going on in the beginning of the dream. I was completely ecstatic.

Mixed Mode Problem Dreams

There have been a number of times where dreams appeared that appeared to give the lie to the tidy differentiations I’ve been establishing here between lucid ecstatic dreams and nonlucid ecstatic dreams. It is interesting that so far, either specific patterns or some probable explanations have emerged for these deviants.
The first example is a dream which clearly has the nonlucid type of ecstatic episode imbedded in a dream which appears to be lucid. The only problem with this description is that the dream may look that way from the write-up, but there was no felt-sense of a lucid dream. It preceded the initiation dream in which my dreaming “I” recognized those types of dreams as being something unique. The ecstatic portion of this very long dream is as follows.

Eyes In The River (August 10, 1975)
[After several scenes], I was in a room in the upper story of a house With my arms held over my head, I looked out the window and there I saw something very beautiful. As soon as I saw it, the nature of the dream changed in such a way that the whole dream seemed luminous and full of a wide eerie atmosphere of beauty. The image of the outside scene seemed to fill my consciousness, so that the sense of myself diminished to nearly nothing—as if I were the outside scene as well as the inside watcher (which is strictly speaking true since this was a dream). The way this shift felt is difficult to describe. In a way I was ecstatic, but without the sense of being individually emotional. Rather, everything expanded so that the beauty seemed to beat, or vibrate, through the whole dream and the dreamer.
What I saw was a river, misting upwards, much like the Cooper River does on a cool morning, steaming like an elongated cup of coffee or tea. Hippopotamuses swam underwater, great shadows moving to and fro. One by one, here and there, they would rise slowly to the surface, and their great luminous eyes would rise up and serenely peer through the mist from underneath protective ridges of bone. Only the eye-ridges and their eyes would break above the surface of the water. After a few moments of gazing about, the eyes and head would tip slowly sideways, and slide back under. I was entranced. The misty surface of the river shifted back and forth with the movement of the luminous eyes rising up above the dark shadows of their bodies and then sliding back under the water again. But, as I stood looking at them, my forgotten arms still over my head, danger came into the house. People began to panic. They ran past me, out onto the porch roof and jumped to the ground as if fire had blocked the usual exits. It didn’t occur to me that whatever the danger was, it would also be a danger to me; I just kept on looking at the eyes in the water, forgetting about all else. They were so very, very beautiful, with a gentle, feminine aspect. Soon I was musing there, alone. I said to myself, I must remember this when I wake up.
Then abruptly, the scene changed
The second example is clearly a lucid dream, but in addition to the usual steady-state background of joy, there is a section that looks like it is moving toward the type of passive ecstatic merging that goes on once in a while in my nonlucid dreams. There have been several dreams like this, and they share three characteristics. First, the sense of identity is not lost. Second, a sensation of cold, or chill is present. Third, there is an atmosphere of quiet that may include a whispering sound, as well as visual imagery of snow. An example of this follows.

Dancer With a Changing Face (January 12, 1982)
. . . I woke up in a daze and reached over into my pocketbook, which was next to my bed as usual, and found my bottle of pills. I sat up with the pill bottle in hand, took off the top, took out the wad of cotton, and started to reach for one of the red and grey pills. But, before I gripped the pill, I stopped, and looked at the piece of cotton in my hand and said, “Hey, wait a minute, I didn’t have any cotton in the top of this pill bottle.”
Then, with a leap of joy I realized that I hadn’t woken up at all. I was dreaming and I was having one of these “fully aware” dreams for the first time in several years.
‘I must be getting better; maybe this medicine is doing me good,’ I thought. I experimentally threw the cotton away, and instead of falling to the floor, it went sailing slowly in a straight line outwards, defying the laws of gravity. I was overjoyed to see this, because I knew for sure that I must be in the land of dreams.
I looked around at my new world to see what there was to see. It was very very interesting to me. The corner I was in was an exact replica of my bedroom The most interesting feature of the room was the bank of windows opposite the door. These ran the entire length of the room and were covered by a wooden latticework that was very attractive. I got up and walked across a distinctly cold cement floor in my bare feet and looked out.
I was gripped by the sight of a beautiful, luminous, quiet scene: snow falling in the whisper-quiet fashion it assumes when the flakes are fat and there is no wind. Neat houses sat across the way, with a little dip of the land in between. Evergreens here and there were all edged with snow. The snow whispered to me. I quietly enjoyed this for a while, drinking it in and drinking it in, and then finally let it go to turn to the door
The third type of dream that does not tidily fit the lucid pattern belongs to a group that has only arisen in the last six years. This pattern emerged when I started to read more about lucid dreaming per se in the 1983–1984 time frame, and participated in some studies by Scott Sparrow that encouraged more lucid dreaming. As the numbers of my lucid dreams rose, my dreaming mind wanted to refine its opinion of what state was going on. (It seemed to do this by itself before I made up my daytime mind that this might be interesting to think about.) When it would recognize that I was asleep, and must therefore be dreaming, it would sometime object to the “lucid dream” label, because the felt-sense was different. The lucid “dream” that didn’t feel like a dream often seemed to slide into and out of other types of dreaming. The following example is an experience which probably is a mixture of dream and hypnopompic image as far as the research world is concerned, but since my bedroom lacks a sleep lab, there is no way of my knowing how much of which is what. By this time in my dreaming career, many of my ordinary middle-of-the-night lucid and nonlucid dreams have passages with a lot of reflective verbiage like this one does, so that is definitely no criterion.
In the past, I could have had more of an opinion as to the type of dream this is, because hypnagogic/hypnopompic images would wink on in full color, and, like a snapshot, would lack the plot or the sense of inherent symbolism that is characteristic of most of my dreams. They could easily be distinguished from dreams. However, over the years, hypnagogic possibilities have developed to include dream-like “movies” which feel more like hypnagogic images than dreams, lucid-like experiences in which I know I’m not awake but feel like I’m in an altered state that is somehow different than lucid dreaming OR hypnagogic/hypnopompic imaging, sliding scale experiences which move from static images to “movies” to full-blown dreams or vice versa, and so on.
Whatever this experience should be called, it was certainly ecstatic.

Light And The Ivory City (February 22, 1988)
Shifting abruptly out of dreamless sleep into lucid dreaming, I found myself viewing a static pattern of dusty white lines and rectangles as if looking across the roofs and streets of a deserted Middle-Eastern city. Everything was a soft, clean, white color . . . even the “dust” in the “streets.” Although I knew without a doubt that I was in my bed in the dark night, a soft ivory “daylight,” filled the image from end to end.
As I strained with my eyes, trying to get this picture in better focus, something distinctly in my throat and upper chest region was also breathing in the sense of how beautiful the ivory city was. This steady taking-in was like a low-keyed ecstasy that just went on and on regardless of what I thought.
Nothing much happened “out there” at first, yet my mind became very busy-busy, trying to figure out how “I” was related to what I was “looking at.” I knew I was not awake in any normal sense of the word, and therefore ought to assume I was dreaming a lucid dream, but this experience didn’t feel like a dream. Something seemed to be really “out there” in front of my open eyes . . . yet I was absolutely convinced I was asleep, lying on my back in bed with my real eyes closed.
My busy-busy mind then saw matters as even more complex. A faint conflicting feeling in the background said “I” was “really” somewhere else altogether. According to this faint felt-sense, whatever there was in me that was seeing, was hovering over a real city, but the whatever wasn’t focusing it quite right.
Regardless, I couldn’t quite focus. My busy-busy mind struggled quite a bit to focus better, to see whether this was really an unfocused vision of a real city, or just an abstract pattern that reminded me of a city.
Suddenly I felt a kind of clenching movement of the upper spine, around shoulder-blade level, a distinctly physical nerve/muscle sensation accompanied by a sense of certainty that at least THIS event took place “out there” in my real physical spine, not “in here” in a mental world. The bodily sensation rose once, then subsided, followed by a wonderful clearing and spreading of my mind space, as if my inner space had suddenly grown much larger and all the mental “dust” and “humidity” had dropped out of the air.
This change in the sense of mind “size” was a new (and short-lived) experience. Everything grew marvelously wide and “unclouded” all by itself, but the extra capacity didn’t help. I still didn’t “get it,” grasp it, focus, or feel sure about how the pattern/city related to me.
Suddenly I just gave up grappling with this trying-to-perceive and decided arbitrarily that whatever the lovely thing was, all of ME was still in bed, reacting to an image before my inner vision. In spite of the way it felt, it was NOT “out there.” I asserted to myself that I was NOT wandering about the earth in a second body viewing a real city; the OBE “remote location” idea was just a tiresome idea from a book somewhere.
In other words, I discarded these multiple conflicting idea patterns because of some kind of mental tiring, not because of a satisfying resolution.
While all this busy-busy mental activity was going on, the delicately lit ivory city/ pattern still sat before my eyes, and a wonderful, low-keyed feeling-response kept going on and on, not peaking, but just steady, with no burnout.
After a time, however, the steady glow of the city image itself began to bother me. Its pattern felt like it was burning through the back of my “dream eyes” into real nerves in the real eyes in my real head.
Then I was seized with curiosity, just FILLED with it, wondering if this so-steady image would remain before my vision even if I opened my real physical eyes. I decided to try it out, reasoning that this would be all right because eyelids are not paralyzed in the dream state.
When I carefully opened my eyes, the image did stay there clearly for just a moment, then slowly began to fade, until I could see the dim outline of the bedroom window near the foot of my bed. Quickly I closed my eyes and the image instantly came back, just as strong and glowing as it was before. The soft, spreading light and the utterly pure whiteness of everything was so beautiful; I was so glad I hadn’t lost it.
With a feeling of great interest, I concluded that part of my mind could project an image “that wasn’t really there,” with such vividness that the image could block out seeing the real window, even if it lasted only briefly. I thought this faculty could be strengthened (it didn’t occur to me to wonder if I might be dreaming the eye opening, or to wonder why anyone would want to develop such an hallucinatory capacity!).
As I continued to inwardly “look at” and “take in” the image of the city in the ivory light, I remembered reading a long time ago about a woman with blood sugar problems. This woman had gone into her bathroom, and hallucinated four tiny men playing poker while seated around a tiny card table floating in her toilet bowl. She shut her eyes, thinking that this would cause the illusion to vanish, and then grew hysterical when she opened her eyes and saw the tiny men still there playing cards. A feeling of warmth and compassion toward her rose up and filled my chest. My dream mind thought to itself how sad it was that she had experienced all that agony because she didn’t know how images worked, and especially how they could be retained for a while after you opened your eyes.
As this thought faded away, there appeared to the right of my “visual” field a ball of pure light, purest, purest light, so intense that part of the ivory city was overpowered and blurred. The ball of light, unlike the ivory pattern, had the atmosphere of being a person; it gave out a healing kind of warmth that seemed both emotional and physical. My right cheek was distinctly heated by it. Later, this feeling of heat in my right cheek would return when I remembered the dream, but faded after a week or so.
There was an immediate sense of recognition for this ball of light. It didn’t have to do with names identifying who or what it was. It was an overall bodily kind of recognition like meeting a very good friend unexpectedly in a crowd of strangers. My whole mind-sense ceased its busy-busy activity and turned itself slowly toward the ball of light in a composed, formal movement, as if all of me were participating in a Japanese tea ceremony.
I calmly thought that I was epileptic, so it might be better to do such things in small doses. [This is true.] Without haste or regret for this brevity, I bent my mind as if it were bowing, and briefly touched the light with my mind. Then I slowly climbed up through layers of sleep into full wakening, still ecstatic.
This write-up is particularly apt for pointing out the problems of trying to express multifaceted dreams that place their emphasis on an element other than the dream’s plot. Language does not work very well, because it doesn’t convey the strongest element, which was not the linear stream of ideas and events, but rather the aura of beauty and ecstasy that remained a steady substrata all the way through. Since this dominating element did not change much and is hard to convey anyway, there’s not much to be said after a sentence or two in the beginning. How many times should I have repeated “By the way, that was still going on while this other thing was happening”? The preponderance of the description is spent explaining the shifts in visual imagery and ideation, which were the less dominant elements, but are more amenable to expression in verbal language, especially English. Reading this write-up is like watching a film where somebody turned off the sound.
This problem is probably experienced by anyone trying to convey how an ecstatic state felt.

##### II.C.2 Dream Light: Categories of Visual Experience During Lucid Dreaming

###### GEORGE GILLESPIE

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

I have put into sixteen categories visual experiences associated with my lucid dreaming. The basic difference between lucid dreaming and ordinary dreaming is that in lucid dreaming I know I am dreaming, and in ordinary dreaming I do not. Lucid dreaming often has the visual characteristics of ordinary dreaming. On the other hand, lucid dreaming may lead to some experiences of light similar to what is reported in mystical or supposed mystical accounts (Gillespie, 1986). Therefore, the categories actually apply to a continuum from ordinary dreaming through lucid dreaming to phenomena associated with mystical experience.
I have tried to make as few categories as possible. The inclusion of a category is based on a decision that something essentially different happens in that category that does not happen in the other categories. Each category has a pure form, but not every visual phenomenon is a pure form of a category. The categories are set against the norm of ordinary visual dream experience. The categories are:

1. Ordinary dream light. Often lucid dreams have the same visual quality as ordinary dreams. In ordinary dreams I see people and other creatures, places, and objects, perhaps strange or exaggerated, but basically in forms that copy my waking experience. My surroundings appear to have the normal brightness of everyday life or at times less. My visual experience is coordinated with my movement and other sense experience. If I move my dreamed eyes or head or body, I experience new visual content relevant to my new position.

2. Bright, clear dreams. A prominent characteristic of lucid dreams is that they are often much brighter and clearer than ordinary dreams. This brightness and clarity may precede my realization that I am dreaming. In lucid dreams the colors are often intense and varied, at times even more than in waking life. The extra brightness and clarity are often noted during the dream itself.

3. Areas of bright light. Often there is a particularly bright and colorless light in one part of the visual environment. When this ill-defined bright area appears in the context of a scene, the light may appear to coincide with something in the scene, such as a hole in the sidewalk. I have often seen a general ill-defined area of light not coinciding with anything in the environment and partly obscuring the view. This light has always been to the left and center of my view. My reaction, until I trained myself differently, was to believe I was waking up and seeing the light of my room. Sometimes I see a vague area of bright light against darkness, as after I have closed my dreamed eyes. This has usually been on the left side of my view. Patricia Garfield (1979) has reported seeing light as coming from underneath a closed door or shining through a window, in lucid dreams.
I have occasionally seen bright light on the periphery of my vision, so far off to the side that I cannot tell whether it has a particular shape or not. I cannot look at it directly. The effect is as though this intense light is sitting in the left corner of my left eye. It remains there no matter what movement I make.
Certain areas of light appear to play no part in the ongoing dream. They appear to be something else happening in the visual field. They can be taken as part of the dream scene if they happen to look like they fit in.

4. Room light. Room light is light from outside me carried into the dream in the images or outlines of objects in the room. At night, when only the bedroom window has light, the shape of the lit window may become a part of the dream, presenting the general perspective in the dream that is given to my sleeping eyes. If there is complete daylight in the room, some of the room objects may be seen though to some extent transformed. In none of these experiences have I awakened to find my eyes already open. In one lucid dream I saw a green towel hanging from a bar on the wall in front of me. But instead of hanging down from the bar, it stuck out from the bar towards me. This utterly confused me. After I woke up, I found that I had seen in detail the towel that was hanging towards me from above the bed. Another lucid dream led to the “out-of-body” sensation. As I projected through space, stomach downward, I watched a large square of light to my left. It remained still as I sped forward. When I awoke directly from that experience, I was lying on my back. I saw that the square of light was the light of my room window. It had the same relation to my eyes that it had had in the dream. Thus I was assured that I had not really projected anywhere.
In the two cases just described, I did not realize at the time that what I was seeing actually belonged to my room. But sometimes I have seen doors or windows in a lucid dream and understood at the time (correctly) that they were the actual doors or windows of the bedroom.

5. Imprecise visual environment. There are times when no specific visual environment can be discerned, yet the visual field is not empty. What I see is unclear, blurred, confused, and/or changing. Imprecise visual environment seems to be the initiation of imaging without resolution as to its content. In lucid dreaming, when I interact less with my environment and anticipate less, upon turning my head I tend to see either nothing or this nonresolution of image. In one lucid dream I saw a building. I willed it to change into something, but I had not decided what to change it to. It became imprecise and its elements moved constantly until I looked away.

6. Memory and imagination. This category is not a visual experience in the sense that the other categories are. When awake, I can look about me while voluntarily recalling or imagining what another place looks like. While dreaming lucidly, I can likewise keep my attention on what is presented to me visually, while I picture something in my mind. I was able to bring to mind specifically to some degree correctly the general layout of my grandmother’s house. This I did in a number of dream contexts. The visual memory or imagined scene does not appear as if before the eyes. It does not replace what I am seeing.

7. Uniform darkness. Although in a sense nothing is before me when my visual field is dark, darkness is a visual experience, for it is seen. When lucid, I often choose to close my dreamed eyes, and my view becomes dark. There are degrees and kinds of darkness. There is darkness comparable to what I see with my eyes closed while awake. There is what looks like a dark night sk y or a moonlit night sky. There is dull darkness. There can also be shiny darkness, such as of black lacquer.

8. Textures in darkness. Sometimes I notice faint and formless textures in the darkness. These variations in the darkness are usually difficult to identify or describe. There are no patterns or definite shapes. This mottling is perhaps little different from common waking closed-eye darkness when a faint and formless light of entoptic origin may be seen.

9. Patterns in darkness. Although I have often seen darkness in a dream, it was not until I began to examine darkness closely that at times I came across faintly-seen patterns. The time I saw the patterns most distinctly, I was also tossing about in the air. I saw a collection of patterns that remained before me in a fixed position in spite of my tumbling about. My view was divided into possibly eight to twelve irregularly shaped sections. Each contained its own pattern. Each section of pattern seemed to vibrate or twitch within itself, though the section divisions remained stable. I was able to examine the whole display, scanning right to left and back again.
Most of the sections had line or herring bone designs; one had all dots close together; and one had a chessboard pattern. The chessboard and dot designs I have seen often in hypnopompic experiences, though not the parallel lines. The overall effect is roughly as illustrated by Shepard (1978, plate I:E. and F.), where he labels them “entoptic images.” My patterns were all in shades of grey and did not contain the brightness shown in his illustrations.

10. Hypnagogic-type images. The term “hypnagogic image” properly refers to an image that appears while I am falling asleep. I have seen the same type of image while studying the darkness before me while dreaming. After closing my dreamed eyes I have seen before me faintly a series of briefly-appearing, small, still scenes that never had the brightness, clarity, or size of dream images. For example, these were of a series of row houses, then a little statue of a Buddha in an alcove, then a storefront window. I saw these as though through darkness. The scenes were unrelated to the dream in which I had closed my eyes. I was definitely asleep. After this I noticeably woke up.

11. Minor lights. Minor lights are small bright lights appearing against a dark or blank background. They may be points of light, small lines, a crack of light, or other forms. They normally lack color and are not representational, though points of light can be taken for stars, or a flash of light can be taken for lightning. They show no pattern or regularity. Normally I see these after eliminating the visual dream environment and starting to float, fall or fly in the dark or blankness. They shift in and out of view with my movement.

12. Disks of light. The disk of light is a perfectly round bright light, with a well-defined circumference. It appears in a variety of sizes. Its light is perfectly white and uniform, and not visually overwhelming like the sun. It is not accompanied by rays and is always seen against darkness. If a dream has been in progress, the disk may be seen against what is taken for night sky and be thought of as a moon, if it is the right size. Sparrow (1976) mentions seeing a moon at times in lucid dreams and has reported that once one appeared to move. I cannot say I have seen a disk of light move. Although I may spin about while I see a disk, it maintains a fixed location before my eyes. One such light appeared to be as though about ten inches away from me, about three or four inches to the left of my point of concentration, and about four inches in diameter. Naturally, no such distances can be involved.

13. Patterns of light. Sometimes I see only swiftly moving patterns covering my visual field and appearing to surround me. They are constantly changing versions of lattices, lines, dots, and colors. I am usually moving quickly when I see these, as when I have eliminated my normal environment and begin to toss about. These patterns are basically variations of elementary hallucinatory form constants (Siegel & Jarvic, 1975) seen from different perspectives. They contrast with the patterns in darkness (described above) by their brightness, their appearance at other perspectives than face on, and their constant change. Moss (1985a, 1985b) reports many variations of moving patterns such as of tunnels, funnels, lattices, and particularly of what he calls the vortex effect.

14. Contentless light only. Sometimes I see nothing before me except light. It may appear to be the sky and may vary from almost dark to very bright. The color is uniform and clear. When I have eliminated visual dream content or am flying, falling, or tossing about, I may not think of the view as sky, but as being blank. In ordinary dreams I experience contentless light less, because I tend to remain in interaction with what is in view and I do not try to free myself from what I am seeing.

15. Light with sun only. The appearance of a sun in contentless light marks an intensification of light. The appearance of the sun is uncommon in my ordinary dreams, and like the view of contentless light, usually marks the cessation of interaction with ordinary dream images. I am usually falling or floating when I see the sun and am greatly exhilarated. The sun varies in size and intensity, often seeming to be at a distance. I may or may not be aware of a defined circumference. As I fall or float, the sun moves in and out of view. van Eeden (1969) reports having seen the disk of the sun. A variation, which I consider to be a greater form of the sun, is the appearance of multiple suns. On one occasion I saw six or seven suns, each gold and bright, with rays. The suns were not located in any obvious relationship to each other. They remained in a fixed position before my eyes though I was spinning. Most often I see the sun without other visual dream content. Sometimes I see it when I desire to see the fullness of light (the last category). Although the sun is much less than the fullness of light, it is also as different from the disk of light as the actual sun is from the moon.

16. Fullness of light. There is a light that fills the visual field with overwhelming brilliance. It usually has the whiteness and intensity of the light that is next to the sun high in a clear sky, though it is not difficult to look at. Whereas the milder appearances of the sun seem to be “out there,” in the fullness of light a vivid white fire appears to come upon me and surround me. I am normally in darkness when the light first appears, though twice I was in an ongoing visual dream. Often I notice the sun first to be above my head. It then appears to descend to a place high before me, and I am overcome by light. I may or may not continue to be aware of the sun’s circumference. If I see the orb of the sun, it remains in a stable location before my eyes even while I move or dance. While I keep my attention on the fullness of light, my awareness of my dreamed body decreases.
The fullness of light is accompanied by intense spontaneous feelings of joy and devotion. I feel that God is present in the light. There is nothing like these feelings with the lesser sun. There would appear to be a continuum from the mildest appearance of the sun to the greatest fullness of light. But the fullness of light is incomparably brighter than a simple view of the sun. And the exhilaration that may accompany the view of the lesser sun is nothing like the intense feelings of devotion and joy in the fullness of light.

References

Garfield, P. (1979). Pathway to ecstasy: The way of the dream mandala. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Gillespie, G. (1986). Ordinary dreams, lucid dreams, and mystical experience. Lucidity Letter, 5(1), 27–31.

Moss, K. (1985a). Experimentation with the vortex phenomenon in lucid dreams. Lucidity Letter, 4(1), 131–132.

Moss, K. (1985b). Photographic and cinematographic applications in lucid dream control. Lucidity Letter, 4(2), 98–103.

Shepard, R.N. (1978). Externalization of mental images and the act of creation. In B.S. Randhawa and W.E. Coffman (Eds.). Visual learning, thinking, and communication (pp. 133–189). New York: Academic Press.

Siegel, R.K. & Jarvic, M.E. (1975). Drug-induced hallucinations in animals and man. In R.K. Siegel and L.J. West (Eds.). Hallucinations: Behavior, experience, and theory (pp. 81–161). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Sparrow, G.S. (1976). Lucid dreaming: Dawning of the clear light. Virginia Beach, Virginia: ARE Press.

van Eeden, F. (1969). A study of dreams. In C.T. Tart (Ed.). Altered states of consciousness(pp. 147–160). Garden City, New York: Anchor Books.

##### II.C.3 Experiencing the Divine in the Lucid Dream State

###### FARIBA BOGZARAN

California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, California

Having personally experienced numerous lucid dreams following incubation tasks centered around wanting to be in the presence of the Great Spirit, I realized that in every lucid dream I experienced the Divine differently. If I were looking for the Divine, my dream ego was actively searching, and usually found a Divine presence; however, if I let go of control, a Divine presence appeared to me. Since I didn’t have any expectation as to the form of the Divine, the outcome of my experiences was often unexpected. Thus I became very curious how other people experienced the Great Spirit in their lucid dreams.
I struggled with many different topics for a Master’s thesis, but my heart was drawn to this one. Since I had to conduct an experimental study, I knew I would be facing many challenges and limitations. In view of my doubts about conducting such a project, I decided to incubate a dream to assist me. I prepared myself for a few days and waited. My incubation query was, “Should I do research about lucidity and the Divine?” The following is the account of my dream.
I am standing on top of a mountain looking over a panoramic forest. I see a large hawk swirling around. I tell myself that if this were a dream I could fly like this hawk. As soon as I say this the hawk comes straight towards me. As it comes closer it becomes smaller and changes into a hummingbird flapping its wings fast, smiling at me. I smile back and at the same time I know this must be a dream. I start imitating the hummingbird and start to fly. As I am in the air, my intention comes to me. “Should I write my thesis on lucidity and the Divine?” Suddenly, I see a dot of purple green color expanding in the sky. It keeps getting bigger, filling the landscape and moving towards me, changing into different rings of colors. The space in which this is occurring is so vast that it is beyond my visual ability. As the rings come closer they change into particles of light moving extremely fast, creating lines that cover everything, everywhere. Strong energy starts to move inside me and my body is changing its form into these particles of light. I don’t see my body any longer but I know I am still there!
These particles slowly change into a night sky with stars. The sky moves like a movie screen from left to right with different planets on display. As the planets move they change into different colored bubbles. There is no landscape anymore, just a vast space with giant air bubbles of different colors, with light shining through them. The bubbles transform into halos covering the infinite and vast space. I know that I am becoming a witness to different layers of the universe. Suddenly everything turns black for a few minutes. I don’t see anything, I don’t feel anything and in the moment of nothing happening, everything happens. Soon, I become aware of my body, I take some deep breaths and slowly the first landscape appears again and I am in the air floating
I become more conscious of my body sensations but I don’t feel I have a body any longer. It is as if my body has dissipated in the experience. Suddenly, I hear noises, I think I have awoken but I have entered into a false awakening . . . [in it] I wake up and write in my journal. Then as I stand up I feel extremely dizzy. I walk out of the door and go on the deck and knock at my housemate’s (Tish) office door. She is sitting in her office with a box full of beads on her lap and on the rocking chair in front of her, an old white haired woman is sitting. I tell Tish I am having an important lucid dream and ask her not to come and wake me up. I walk back to my room but have a hard time keeping my balance. I go back to sleep trying to continue with the lucid dream but I wake up.
I was very confused and disoriented when I actually awoke. I looked at my journal, but it was blank. I wrote down some parts of the dream and went outside on the deck. Tish was on the lower deck. I asked her about the event. She said, “You must have been dreaming!” However, she said she had been in her office the past hour looking through some old beads that were given to her by her grandmother. We found out that the time she was going through the old beads corresponded to the time I was having my false awakening!
I still feel unable to verbalize the experience fully, but it left me with an incredible feeling of focus and purpose. I took the experience as an initiation, a permission to partake in my project. There was no choice but to dedicate my time to explore that aspect of lucidity.
From ancient times, dreams have been a source of inspiration, creativity and, in some traditions, a way to communicate with God (Genesis 28:12; Numbers 12:6; Baha’u’llah, 1945). Lucid dreaming (van Eeden, 1913), a phenomenon in which dreamers are aware in the dream that they are dreaming, has been used as a discipline for spiritual advancement (Evans-Wentz, 1953; Norbu, 1987; Nydal, 1988).
Reports from many researchers in the field of lucid dreaming suggest the possibility of experiencing the Divine in the lucid dream state (Sparrow, 1976; Gillespie, 1983, 1984; LaBerge, 1985; Kelzer, 1987; Bogzaran, 1987, 1988; Hewitt, 1988; Clerc, 1988, Gackenbach & Bosveld, 1989). The word Divine in this study refers to concepts such as God, the Great Mystery, True Self, etc.
The study was designed to investigate two questions:
1. What is the relationship between the dreamer’s waking concept of the Divine and the dreamer’s experience of the Divine in the lucid dream state? The concept of the Divine may be considered the dreamer’s formulation of the Divine, God, or the equivalent.
2. What is the relationship between the nature of the dreamer’s incubation phrase and the dreamer’s subsequent experience of the Divine in a lucid dream? More specifically, does the experience of the Divine during a lucid dream bear any relationship to whether the dreamer incubated a phrase involving actively “seeking” the Divine as compared to passively “experiencing” the Divine?

Method Subjects

A total of 250 lucid dreamers were contacted and asked to participate in this study. Seventy-seven subjects (39 female, 38 male) responded to the questionnaire. Thirty-five of these remembered to do the task in their lucid dreams and constituted the sample upon which subsequent analyses were based. Thirty-one did not have lucid dreams related to the task during the experimental time. Eleven subjects returned only previous experiences related to this study.

Instrument

The researcher developed a questionnaire specifically for this study. In addition to the general background questions, other items included the individual’s concept of the Divine as well as the formulation of the incubation question of seeking, experiencing and seeing the Divine in their lucid dreams.

Procedure
1. The following materials were mailed to subjects: cover letter; instruction sheet; incubation task information; instructions for Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreaming (MILD); questionnaire; dream report form and post questionnaire.
2. An incubation phrase was formulated by the lucid dreamers as a question or a statement to ask or say in their lucid dreams. The following is a selection of some of the incubation phrases that the lucid dreamers formulated: “I would like to see how the universe is run.” “I want to give up my power and submit to the higher self.” “I am Divine.” “I will seek the Divine.” “I wish to experience the Divine.” 3. Subjects repeated the incubation phrase during the day so their intention would be clear when they became lucid in their dreams. While lucid in their dreams, they carried out their intention by voicing either their incubation phrase or question.
4. Lucid dreamers completed the Dream Report immediately after the lucid dream ended. The research materials were mailed back to the researcher at the end of the two weeks of experimental time.

Coding

In order to study the relationship between the lucid dreamers’ concepts of the Divine and their experience of the Divine in their lucid dreams, the researcher categorized both the dreamers’ concepts of the Divine as described in their questionnaire and the reports of their lucid dreams.
The concepts of the Divine were categorized as either personalized or impersonalized. Those subjects, who indicated that their concept of a Divine is that God is manifested through a person, were categorized as personalized. Those who gave a general answer and believed that the Divine is all encompassing, energy, formless, etc. were categorized as the impersonalized Divine.
Encounters of the Divine during the lucid dream were also categorized as either personalized or impersonalized. When the lucid dreamers encountered a person as a Divine presence, their reports were categorized as personalized. Cases where the dreamer reported encountering light, color, etc. were categorized as impersonalized.
The following are some examples of concepts of a Divine figure and lucid dream reports which in this study are referred to as the personalized Divine.
“My God is my Father. Though my relationship with my own father is a loving, tolerant one, I see both my father and my Father as authority figures. . .”
The following is the same dreamer’s lucid dream report.
I became aware of the dream I was floating and saw a short way in front of me a large marble block. . . . I walked-floated toward it, around to the left, and saw that it was the back of a throne. A chair arm, solid and massive was cut into the side of the block. I crept around the side, saw a person’s arm on the marble chair arm. The hand was old, but firm and strong, like a carpenter’s. The sleeve was white and full. The fingers were curved downward over the edge of the arm—relaxed but full of life. I couldn’t see higher than the elbow from my position slightly behind and below. I knew it was God without any doubt.
When individuals did not specify their concept in terms of a person, the impersonal Divine category was selected. For instance one subject wrote, “Divinity is the animate spark which both gives form to everything and is everything. God is not a separate being but an all-encompassing Beingness.” The following lucid dream reflects this person’s encounter with the Divine.
“During a lucid dream I try to maintain lucidity but the scene wants to go blank. I lie very still and try not to awaken. Then I recall that I should ask to see God. I do so and before me appears a moving picture with numerous interwoven cycles—like the workings of a clock. It is also like patterns of pulsating light and shadow moving in cycles. No complete cycle can be seen.”
The incubation phrases were also categorized according to the lucid dreamers’ formulation of the incubation task. The two predominant incubation phrases reported included a seeking/looking for the Divine or an experiencing of the Divine. Thus, in order to see the effect of the incubation task on the dream experience, two categories of active and passive were developed to classify the task. The lucid dreamers were categorized as either actively looking for the Divine or passively observing the outcome of their incubation phrase in their lucid dream.

Results

A chi-square was conducted to determine if the paired observations obtained on the two variables of “the concept of the Divine” and “the lucid dream report” were related. The result, X2(1) = 16.688; p < .0001, revealed a substantial relationship between the subjects’ concept of the Divine and their encountering the Divine in their lucid dreams.
As can be seen in Table 1, 83% of the subjects who believed in the Divine as a person indeed experienced encountering a person as a Divine presence while as 87% percent of the subjects who believed in an impersonal Divine experienced the Divine in forms other than a person.
The second research question was: Does the experience of the Divine during a lucid dream bear any relationship to whether the dreamer incubated a phrase involving actively seeking the Divine as compared to passively experiencing the Divine? A chi-square was also conducted to determine if the paired observations obtained on the two variables of “incubation phrase” and “dreamer’s activity in lucid dreams” are independent. The result, X2(4) = 121.039; p < .0003, showed that the two variables are not independent. Significantly, 92% of the persons who formulated their incubation phrase as “seeking the Divine” were actively looking for the Divine. As can be seen in Table 2, 88% who formulated the phrase as experiencing the Divine did not look for the Divine, but either passively witnessed or allowed the dream to unfold by itself.

Discussion and Conclusion

Among the many limitations of this study, perhaps the most important one is that this type of design reduces the participants’ concepts of the Divine into categories. This kind of simplification into categories of personal and impersonal, which is required by quantitative research, cannot do justice to beliefs and experiences that are sacred and unique to the individual.
The results clearly indicated a significant relation between the person’s report of their preconsideredconcept of the Divine as well as the formulation of their incubation task and their subsequent experience of the Divine in their lucid dreams.
The reports of the concept of the Divine were formulated either towards a belief that God or the Divine appears in a human form (personal concept) or is an all-encompassing energy, formless, etc. (impersonal concept). Individuals who reported their concept of the Divine as a religious figure, e.g., Christ, Buddha, Mother, etc., encountered a person or a religious figure in their lucid dream. On most occasions the encounter was reported to be of a Divine nature or an encounter with a person that the dreamer reported as God.
This research suggests that our preconception of the Divine has an effect on our experience of the Divine in lucid dreaming. In some cases of personalized concept, the Divine was referred to as He, She, Jesus Christ or to a specific person that the subject believed carried the Divine nature and consequently, in their lucid dream, they experienced this person with a Divine nature.
In the post questionnaire, subjects were asked to give feedback as to whether their concept of the Divine was validated. In one case of the personalized Divine, the subject responded:
“Yes, my concept of God is validated by the sense of [the] power of God’s love which I experienced in the dream. I believe that my experience is real and that I learned subjectively what I only believed objectively before.”
With a few exceptions, the subjects who had a clear image of what or who the Divine is, experienced a Divine figure similar to their concept. This finding supports Garfield’s statement that “dreamers who have a clear conception of what to expect of a god or saint in a dream are likely to see their dream image distinctly” (Garfield, 1974, p. 34). Also the report showed that the majority of people with an impersonalized idea of what or who the Divine is, resulted with impersonalized encounters with the Divine. Additionally, in the majority of the cases, even if the dreamer’s concept of the Divine were not so clear, the dreamer’s encounter with the Divine in a lucid dream reflected clearly the dreamer’s concept of the Divine.
The following is an example of a lucid dream from an individual who wanted to seek the Divine:
“. . . In response to something just previous in the dream, I become lucid I remember my dream task for the Bogzaran study—to seek God and the divine—and immediately fall to my knees and assume a praying posture (this would be a very unusual thing for me to do ) Rather than praying, I begin to “seek” in some undefinable manner, reaching out with my mind and trying to contact God out there somewhere in the fabric of the dream.”
Another example of actively seeking the Divine:
“I become lucid I find myself in another room the wall, trying to find a doorway. . . .
Then I begin to look around at my own surroundings. I peek behind a mirror attached to …”
In this study it was also found that the formulation of the incubation task has an effect on the dreamers’ experience in the lucid dream. When the dreamers’ intentions were to “seek” the Divine, they actively looked for the Divine. In this active intention of looking for the Divine, some individuals were able to actually “find” the Divine in a human form or felt the presence of the Divine in other forms or sensations. In his book The Sun and The Shadow, Ken Kelzer describes a lucid dream of encountering the Christ Child that he considers one of the most exceptional and powerful dreams he has ever experienced. He named the dream “The Gift Of Magi.” In this lucid dream, he is travelling by camelacross northern Africa in search of the Christ Child. His journey of seeking the Christ Child takes many days, and finally he arrives at the Jerusalem gate. After he leaves Herod’s court, he writes:
“I quickly arrive at a small, modest home where I behold a marvelous scene. I see the small Christ Child, probably a year old, lying in his crib with Mary and Joseph sitting beside him.” (Kelzer, 1987, p. 40)
Although Kelzer did not choose an incubation phrase prior to “seek[ing] the Christ Child” in his dream, he found himself travelling across Africa in search of the Christ Child. With that strong intention he actively searched and finally found Him. His experience supports the reports of many individuals in this study who are actively looking and find a Being that the dreamer refers to as a Divine presence. When their intention was to “experience” the Divine, they passively observed the dream event. In the majority of these cases the Divine presence appeared to them rather than the dreamer looking for the Divine. The following dreams are examples of more passive experiences.
“I found myself within a universe of “evil.” I said to myself, “I hope I am dreaming,” whereupon I became lucid. There was still the presence of evil, it was all-pervading. I was very much afraid and recalled that I wished to experience the Divine. Having thought, or uttered, the task, there was an explosion of color at the center of this “evil” universe, and I felt a shock wave of all-pervading God that seemed to reach to the core of my being. I thought to myself, ‘Good grief,’ whereupon I awoke.”
In another example the dreamer writes that after he becomes lucid:
“My attention is drawn upward. As I look up I first see a figure quite high in the sky that is slowly descending. I immediately recognize it as Jesus. He is wearing a golden robe and there is a golden aura about him. I lower my head and am in great awe at His appearance. My first thought is to not move, but wait to see what transpires. I don’t want to do anything that might cause me to lose lucidity.”
In this dream the dreamer again is allowing the experience to unfold without voluntarily looking for the Divine. Here Jesus appears to him and he remains where he is in the dream while witnessing the coming of Christ. Later in his dream he has a lengthy conversation with Jesus while remaining lucid in his dream. It seems that the intention of wanting to be in the presence of the Divine during a lucid dream can facilitate the occurence of such an experience. Our concept of the Divine, however, might have an effect on our experience of encountering with the Divine. Thus the way in which we set and carry our intention can have an effect on how our dream ego responds in the lucid dream. Individuals who were actively seeking the Divine seemed more likely to exert a certain amount of control over the direction of the dream. On the other hand, when the dreamer allowed the experience to unfold, the dream took charge. Although there was a significant relation found in this study between the incubation phrase and dream experience, the words that are used might not be so important as the intention. In his book Lucid Dreaming, Stephen LaBerge reports his experience of “seeking the highest.” It is a good illustration of setting a task of seeking the Highest and also allowing the experience to unfold.
In his lucid dream he is driving a car. While lucid and in control he is confronted with an attractive hitchhiker. His first impulse is to pick her up, but he decides that he has done that in other dreams before. He wants to try something new. He decides to “seek the Highest.” He writes:
“As soon as I opened myself to guidance, my car took off into the air, flying rapidly upward, until it fell behind me like the first stage of a rocket. I continued to fly higher into the clouds, where I passed a cross on a steeple, a star of David, and other religious symbols” (LaBerge, pp. 270–271)
Although he says he wants to seek the Divine (implying active control), he “opened” himself to guidance, at which point he seems to let go of control and the dream takes charge.
In the present study reports showed that, in both searching or experiencing the Divine, the Divine encounter occurred in one form or another. One implication of this research is that it is possible to experience the Divine (the Divine in which we believe) through incubating lucid dreams.

References

Baha’u’llah (1945). The seven valleys and the four valleys. Illinois: Baha’i Publishing Trust.

Bogzaran, F. (1988). Lucidity and meeting the unknown. Dream Network Bulletin, 7(4), 16.

Bogzaran, F. (1987). The creative process: Paintings inspired from the lucid dream. Lucidity Letter, 6(2).

Clerc, O. (1988). Lucid dreaming and the evolution of human consciousness. Lucidity Letter, 7(1).

Evans-Wentz, W.Y. (1953). Tibetan Yoga and secret doctrines. London: Oxford University Press.

Gackenbach, J.I. & Bosveld, J. (1989). Control your dreams. New York: Harper & Row.

Garfield, P. (1974). Creative dreaming. New York: Ballantine.

Gillespie, G. (1983). Lucid dreaming and mysticism: A personal observation. Lucidity Letter, 2(3).

Gillespie, G. (1984). The phenomenon of light in the lucid dreams: Personal observations. Lucidity Letter, 3(4).

Hewitt, D.E. (1988). Induction of ecstatic lucid dreams. Lucidity Letter, 7(1).

Kelzer, K. (1987). The sun and the shadow: My lucid dreaming experiment. Virginia Beach, Virginia: ARE Press.

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

Norbu, N. (1987). The dreamwork book. Amsterdam: Stichting Dzogchen.

Nydahl, O. (1988). Entering the diamond way. San Francisco: New Dimension Radio Station.

Sparrow, G.S. (1976). Lucid dreaming: Dawning of the clear light. Virginia Beach, Virginia: ARE Press.

van Eeden, F. (1913). A study of dreams. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 26, 431–61.

##### II.C.4 East Meets West, Buddhism Meets Christianity: The Lucid Dream as a Path for Union

###### KENNETH KELZER

Novato, California

When I think about lucid dreaming I think about a vast universe. In particular, I think about Christopher Columbus and regard his epic voyage as a perfect metaphor for what we are attempting to do in exploring the lucid dream state. When Columbus discovered a new world (new to Europeans) there were many ramifications of his discovery. I have always been intrigued by the maps that appear in our history books, maps of the new world that originated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, attempts on the part of those early cartographers to begin to describe and delineate what the explorers were discovering. Some of those early maps had some degree of accuracy and some were intriguingly misshapen. I think it is important for us to keep this metaphor in mind as we approach the vast spectrum of lucid dreaming which we are beginning to explore. I would like to discuss one end of this vast spectrum, the end that constitutes one of my primary areas of interest, namely the lucid dream as mystical experience. I have for some time been intrigued by a book written by Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines. It contains an interesting section, fifteen or twenty pages in length, on the Yoga of the Dream State, the oldest known treatise that we have from any culture on the subject of lucid dreaming. While we have numerous brief and scattered references to lucid dreaming from other sources, Evans-Wentz’s book is the first text from any culture that attempts to talk about dream lucidity in length and in depth. I began re-reading some of his treatise, written very succinctly, just this morning, and I found that I really felt that I understood many portions of the text, and that they made a lot of sense to me. I remembered that when I had read this same material ten years ago it had felt very strange, dull and foreign. Something happens to a person in his or her capacity to understand esoteric ideas. After we’ve had certain types of experiences we are better able to understand esoteric writings that once seemed totally foreign.

Western Experiences of the Light

I was once a student for the Roman Catholic priesthood, and I spent eleven years of my life in the seminary system, a very rational analytic educational system. I am still very interested in how personal experiences of the “Light” are mentioned in the Bible, though mentioned very sparingly. One of my favorite quotations is from Ephesians, Chapter 5:14. “Awake oh sleeper, and arise from the dead, and the Christ will give you light.” “The Christ” was not Jesus’ last name as we often interpret it today, but it was a Greek term meaning the anointed one, someone specifically chosen by God to play a prophetic role in Hebrew culture. This biblical passage and a few others indicate that in the Western world we do have a veiled tradition, a hidden tradition of references to personal light and personal encounter with the light. But now in the twentieth century many of us are trying to bring that tradition out into the open and make it more available. Let me illustrate by recounting a recent dream from a lady in one of my therapy groups.
Suzanne [a pseudonym] is an experienced lucid dreamer. She had been working on the issue of adjustingto the fact that her husband was about to retire, about which she had a lot of mixed feelings. She was in her late fifties. Her husband was just turning sixty, and worked as a top-level executive for a company that allowed him and his family to travel around the world in the company jet and attend fabulous parties in exotic places several times a year. Suzanne was very attached to these parties. She really enjoyed them, and while she was looking forward to her husband’s retirement she was also already feeling incipient sadness and anticipatory grief over her forth-coming loss. This was her dream.
Suzanne is floating down a river to the ocean. As she reaches the ocean she realizes she is dreaming, and becomes lucid. As she swims out into the ocean she sees a gigantic male arm and hand reaching out to her, and someone calling and beckoning to her. It speaks to her silently and symbolically saying, “Come and help me.” She feels the power of the gargantuan hand and is determined not to get caught in its grip, so she swims around it repeatedly sending it a vibration of love and peace until finally the hand and arm shrink down to a manageable size. Now she takes the hand in her own hand and goes down with it into the ocean. They go down, down and she comes to the bottom of the sea and she sees a nude male body lying on the ocean floor and approaches it. The man looks similar to her husband, though also dissimilar in certain ways. She feels a great deal of compassion for him. She approaches him and tries to send him a message of consolation. She makes a sexual overture but the man does not respond. Now she approaches his body from different sides and continues to make sexual advances while receiving no response, until at last she decides it is just time to move on. She peacefully floats up to the surface of the ocean and as the dream ends she feels very good.
We worked with this dream in the group using a Gestalt therapy process. Suzanne lay down on the floor of the room, acted out the role of the man, then acted her role, experiencing the dream symbols from all of their different aspects. She played with the fact that she was lucid in the dream while the man was not, and that she was calling him to awaken but he did not. That night when her husband came home from work Suzanne had a most unusual experience.
Suzanne’s husband is a very rational, linear-thinking type of man who thinks that dream work is a curiosity at best. As he entered the kitchen he said something to her that was very uncharacteristic: “Would you mind just hugging me?” She quickly complied. Then he suddenly lay down on the floor of the kitchen, and reaching up with one arm, said: “Would you just mind lying here on the floor with me and putting your arms around me?” Again she complied. But now her mind was racing with all the power of this event, which she recognized at once as both psychic and synchronistic. She comforted him physically for awhile, and when he said, “Thank you, that’s fine,” they both stood up. Then she said: “I have to tell you this dream I had three days ago.” She told him her dream and her experience in the group and he was amazed.
I am not sure where all of these things, these “psychic events,” are leading us, but as we become more lucid they seem to be leading us into a new realm of living, similar to the “new world” that Columbus discovered. Our initial task, perhaps, is to allow ourselves to become more comfortable with, more familiar with and more knowledgeable of psychic phenomena, and the transformative experiences that burst our old models of the universe. Secondly, we need to allow ourselves to become conscious of these types of experiences on a more frequent basis These kinds of experiences don’t seem to be so rare anymore, as we open and remain open to psychic possibilities.

Nightmare Therapy

As a psychotherapist I am particularly interested in the process of working with potential nightmares, dream situations in which the dreamer finds himself or herself being attacked. I am sure you are all familiar with various methods of fighting back in such dreams, and familiar with the potential forbecoming lucid when one is under pressure both in the dream state and in the waking state [One familiar] model . . . is to face the adversary in the dream and fight back, even to the point of killing the adversary if necessary. That method is commonly called the Senoi method. The second rather well known model is one of facing the adversary in a threatening situation and fighting back verbally and psychologically with a series of forceful and pointed questions such as “Who are you?” and “What do you want?” This demanding and aggressively engaging type of interaction is generally deemed to be less violent than the first model. The third model involves facing the adversary and becoming lucid in the dream, and then consciously creating strategic departures from or transcending of the threatening dream image, such as flying away from the scene (which is not necessarily a form of escapism), flying over a barrier or flying through a wall, or perhaps levitating one’s body in the dream.
A few days ago I heard a fourth model presented by one of my students. Facing the adversary and becoming lucid in the dream, this dreamer allowed the adversary to kill her with a sword, knowing all the while that absolutely no harm could come from this experience. Fully lucid and looking at her dream attacker she said: “You can plunge the sword through me if you wish,” whereupon the adversary did just that. Then the dreamer drew the sword out of her own dream body and very lovingly and wisely gave it back to the adversary and said: “Thank you.” That model was new to me. I am always impressed by the responses that are created by people who are using dream lucidity for personal transformation.

Ego Traps

I think the territory of dream lucidity is so vast that we will need frequent reminders of this fact in order not to fall into some of the more popular and readily available ego traps surrounding lucid dreaming. I would like to expand on this theme for a moment. You probably remember the story of the three blind pygmies [sic] who were each touching a portion of a large elephant. After a short time each pygmy began arguing vehemently that he knew what an elephant was and each began spending a lot of energy trying to convince the others to speak of the elephant exclusively in his terms. I believe we are beginning to see a re-enactment of the pygmy scenario in lucid dream dialogue and lucid dream debate. Perhaps many of these debates originate from our collective failure to realize that the territory of this altered state is so vast—it’s much bigger than the elephant, and even much bigger than the new world that Columbus found—that many different explorers are bound to discover many different things. At this stage it is important to create an explorational attitude in our dialoguing with each other so that we can compare our differing reports with equanimity, and compare and contrast our differing experiences with mutual respect.
It is far too early yet to look for any kind of a consensus on the nature and scope of lucid dreaming. Simply because some people have mystical experiences in lucid dreams does not mean that everybody will, and it certainly does not mean that everybody should. Collectively, we need to continue letting go of our expectations about what ought to happen in lucid dreams. Obviously that is one of the first ego traps that we are likely to fall into: developing expectations and models about what we think ought to happen. The second ego trap is what I would call the “merit badge trap.” Now that some of us are becoming lucid dreamers, we may be tempted to act like Eagle Scouts, parading around in public with our merit badges and focusing excessively on our emotional investment instead of focusing primarily on communicating about our experiences. I think we need to communicate about what is happening in our inner realms, but we have to let go of the specialness of it, because we can fall into an endless kind of struggle if we turn psychospiritual development into some kind of an achievement. There is a challenging paradox herebecause if we look at such development from a certain model it does seem to be an authentic achievement. And yet if we look at it only from the achievement model we are going to fall, I think, into the “specialness of me” trap, the merit badge trap.
Still another trap is the trap of the universal blueprint. This trap contains the assumption that some type of universal blueprint exists in which the developmental stages of personal growth in dreamwork can be discovered or deciphered. For example, I originally assumed that lucid dreaming occurred in people who were somehow more advanced in their development. I also assumed that serious students of the dream state needed to develop their basic dreamwork skills before intentionally introducing lucidity. Now, I have come to realize that these assumptions are only assumptions, and while they may be accurate in certain cases, they do not necessarily hold true in all cases.

Mystical Experiences

But what about mystical experiences? Do they happen in lucid dreams, and if so what does that mean? In my own process of inducing lucid dreaming deliberately, which began in 1980 after working with dreams as a teacher and therapist for over 15 years, I was surprised, and in some ways shocked, to encounter certain dreams that were so powerful that they transcended all of my former experiences. They broke me out of those models of the universe, models of consciousness and models of feeling, thinking and reacting that had heretofore structured my reality. Some of this was quite alarming to me at the time. I would like to read one of those dreams to you, perhaps to give you a flavor of what some people do indeed encounter in the lucid state, and the need that I think we have to be aware of the potential of this powerful altered state.
Dr. Tart has talked about the low lucid dream and the high lucid dream. I like that concept very much, but I would extend it even further. I think that we need a model similar to a giant graduated cylinder that goes all the way up to the sky and beyond. I remember taking chemistry in college and working with one of those tall, glass, graduated cylinders that went from 1 cc to 100 cc’s. I think that an objective scale for the measuring of dream would have to be something like that tall, graduated cylinder except it would not stop at 100. It would go on up to 1000 or even 10,000 and the top of the scale would be beyond our vision at this point in time. I think now, that the range of such a scale would have to be infinite, implying that there are many, many degrees and gradations of lucid consciousness.

The Arrival of the Serpent Power

Let me read now an example of a dream that I have recounted in my book (Kelzer, 1987) which I consider to have been a mystical experience. I call this dream “The Arrival of the Serpent Power.”
I’m standing somewhere inside a small dark room, and I see two square window frames in front of me. The frames are simple open spaces in the wall, and I see a bright light streaming in from the outside. I see someone’s hand coming in through one of the windows, reaching toward me, as it holds out some small object of art, perhaps a jewel or crystal. I only see his hand and wrist, and the beautiful small object, as the room itself is in total darkness. Suddenly I realize I am dreaming, and I feel a powerful jolt of energy shoot through my body. I rise up off the floor and enter the light, flying head first through one of the open window frames.
Instantly I enter a whole new scene. Still lucid, I am now outside in a remote area in the woods, standing beside a small log cabin. A beautiful blanket of freshly fallen white snow covers the entire scene with many trees and a lovely valley that extends before me. I am with an unknown female companion, and we are held captive by a band of Indians. As I look out across the valley below me and up the crest on the opposite side, I see two strong-willed and determined cowboys mounted on horses. Swiftly they ride through the deep snow drifts and in a matter of seconds they cover the distance between us, and they rescue us from the Indians. There is no shooting or violence. They simply arrive, emitting so much power out of their bodies that I know we are liberated.
The scene changes abruptly. Now I am lying face down on the ground somewhere on a patch of bare brown earth. Still fully aware that I am dreaming, I see a huge serpent approach me from the right. Quickly it glides over my back, then turns and passes back underneath me, silently sliding between my body and the ground. Then it rises and turns and comes back up over me again, strongly gripping me around my chest in its powerful coil. Its grey-brown body is about three to four inches thick, and about thirty feet long. Its eyes are strange yellow-green in color, and they gaze at me calmly and steadily, continuously emitting their soft, yellow-green luminescence from within. Finding its position now, the serpent pauses, its head poised in the air about three feet above me. It watches me through its glowing eyes, with a calm and amazingly neutral objectivity. Arching my neck backward and straining to lift my head, I look upward. Our eyes meet, and the impact is extremely powerful, absolutely unforgettable as I gaze for a long moment into the serpent’s profound yellow-green eyes, utterly perplexed and fascinated at the same time. Now I drop my head to the ground and begin to wrestle with the serpent, trying to free myself from its grip. I discover that I am no match for its incredible strength. I feel afraid that it will crush me, and I wrestle with all my might for some time, until exhausted I decide to stop struggling. Soon I perceive that the serpent is actually very gentle, merely intent on holding me in its relentless grip. I am very surprised to feel that its body is warm blooded, and not cold blooded as I would expect. Suddenly it makes a quick jerky movement with its coil, which rotates my prone body onto its side. After a few moments it jerks me back again to a face down position. The serpent seems to be playing with me in some strange uncanny fashion, rotating me back and forth in a gradual deliberate manner. Several times it rotates me from my face down position up onto one side, then back to face down, and then up onto the other side. I feel totally subject to its will, as these movements are repeated several times, each time with a quick and powerful jerk of its massive coil.
Suddenly the whole scene vanishes. I feel many confusing, swirling energies moving through my body and I feel a lot of dizziness in my head. After a while my field of vision gradually becomes clear again, and I see myself lying on the same spot of bare, brown earth, face down with my body fully outstretched once again. I am still lucid, fully aware that I am dreaming. Now another large, gray-brown serpent approaches me from my right in the exact same manner as the first. This serpent is fully identical to the first in every detail of its appearance, except it is slightly smaller in size and length. Quickly and smoothly it glides over my body and passes beneath me, going between my body and the ground and coming up over the top again; making one full coil around me exactly as its predecessor had done. Though it is slightly smaller in size I can feel that this serpent too is extremely powerful. It also positions its head about three feet above me and gazes down upon me with full steadiness and inner calm with the same abundance of amazingly neutral, universal objectivity. Again I stare upwards for a time into the amazing powerful eyes of the serpent, trying to fathom its intent. I am entranced with the soft, yellow-green luminescence that steadily flows from somewhere deep, deep within the serpent’s eyes and even from beyond its eyes, as if from the untold reaches of another world. I feel totally in awe as I absorb the air of mystery that emanates from the serpent continuously. I return its steady gaze for a while and then I drop my head as I begin to wrestle with it, struggling with all my might to free myself from its powerful grip. I thrash and thrash about, struggling in every way that I can while the serpent remains virtually motionless, calmly gazing at me from above. Effortlessly it holds me in its single coil, exactly as the first serpent had done, until at last I finally surrender, knowing that I am no match for its incredible strength either. As I lie there quietly for several long moments, I realize that like its predecessor, this serpent, too is quite gentle toward me, in the same, strange, neutral way. I am surprised to feel that it, too, is a warm-blooded creature.
Suddenly I awaken, and I feel very dizzy and confused by multiple, swirling energies surging throughout my body, flowing directly from the dream. I feel overwhelmed by the sheer power of the dream and very excited by it as well.
When the dream ended and I woke up, it was about 3:00 o’clock in the morning. I was completely overwhelmed with the indescribable power that surged through my body, originating from this dream. And now, still examining this experience, I fully believe that it was a kundalini type of initiation. Not intended, searched for, expected or planned by the dreamer, it was, however, a type of experience thatcan happen in certain lucid dreams, and a type of experience that I have heard about from a number of other people. Consequently, I think that we definitely need to be aware of the possibility that some people may experience mystical states and spontaneous kundalini awakenings through the lucid dream state. And in spite of all confusion, doubts and struggles with such esoteric experiences, we would do well to keep our thoughts fixed on a vision of hope. As Richard Bach once wrote: “There was always light shining in the darkness for those who dare to open their eyes at night.”

###### Reference

Kelzer, K. (1987). The sun and the shadow: My experiment with lucid dreaming.Virginia Beach, Virginia: ARE Press.

# Part III: Empirical Work

## Introduction

###### STEPHEN LaBERGE

Stanford University, California

“Experientia docet,” asserts the proverb, but all experiences do not teach equally consistently. The scientific method of controlled observation and Experimentation is designed to elicit reliable answers from the questions we put to nature. Part III contains a sample of the scientific research on lucid dreaming. Most of the empirical studies on the topic have focused on three major aspects of the phenomenon: induction, physiology, and individual differences; this selection is arranged accordingly.
Procedures for the induction of lucid dreaming are of obvious importance to the development of the field, given the rarity of spontaneous lucidity. The section begins with a panel discussion from the first annual meeting of the Lucidity Association outlining many of the basic approaches to the induction of lucid dreams. One of the most promising methods appears to be providing an external stimulus during REM, which if incorporated into the ongoing dream, can cue the dreamer into lucidity. LaBerge and Levitan describe the results of experiments with the DreamLight device based on this principle. Another promising induction method is based on the idea of giving post-hypnotic suggestions for lucidity. The first controlled study of this idea is reported in the article by Dane and Van de Castle.
It is easy to overlook the fact that claims of lucid dreamers of being conscious while asleep can sound impossibly paradoxical to many ears. Sleep laboratory studies have been important because they established that paradoxical or not, lucid dreaming is a reality. The next section surveys some of this laboratory research: studies of the physiology of lucid dreams (LaBerge and Brylowski), of the EEG alpha activity (Ogilvie et al.), and of REM density in TM subjects reporting witnessing (Meirsman).
Another major approach to understanding lucid dreaming is to study individual differences. Comparing the ways in which people who report lucid dreaming differ from those who do not might tell something about how lucid dreaming works. Reprinted here are papers on mental imagery (Blackmore), content and incidence (Gackenbach), and an account of teaching lucid dreaming to junior high school children (Armstrong-Hickey).

### Section A: Induction

##### III.A.1 The Problem of Induction: A Panel Discussion

ROBERT PRICE, STEPHEN LABERGE, CHRISTIAN

BOUCHET,ROGER RIPERT, and JOSEPH DANE

University of Texas at Austin; Stanford University, California; Paris, France;Centre Oniros, St. Denis, France; University of Virginia, Charlottesville

Editor’s Note: This panel discussion includes the following presentations:

- Robert Price: Overview of Current Induction Techniques
- Stephen LaBerge: Mnemonic Induction (MILD) TechniquesUsed With Trigger Devices
- Christian Bouchet: Tholey’s Combined Reflection Techniques
- Roger Ripert: Results of Study Based on Combined Technique
- Joseph Dane: Posthypnotic Suggestion Combined With MILD

Price: All of us here are drawn together by our fascination with the lucid dream experience. We believe that it has the potential to enhance personal development and perhaps to increase our scientific understanding of dreams and consciousness. Without intentional induction procedures, lucid dreams tend to occur spontaneously but sporadically. An individual experiencing a lucid dream for the first time will often become intrigued by it, and attempt to increase the frequency of these experiences by trial and error. These hit and miss methods do not often achieve their goal consistently. If we are to make progress toward scientific and personal understanding of lucid dreams, we must first develop techniques to induce the lucid dream experience reliably. This is the most important task currently facing lucid dream research.

Robert Price: Overview of Current Induction Techniques

Price: At present one can find throughout the literature a wide variety of [proposed induction] techniques, very few of which have been formally tested. In our attempt to find order among the jumble of procedures we need some way of organizing them. There are, of course, many different dimensions along which these techniques may be organized. Some of these are, for example, the time of day practice, induction prior to or during sleep, home or sleep lab setting, and self- or experimenter-induced. By way of introduction, I would like to present one possible classification scheme in a very broad, bare-bones fashion. For those of you interested in fleshing out this outline, it is presented more fully along with its theoretical underpinnings in Gackenbach and LaBerge’s Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain: Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming (Gackenbach & LaBerge, 1988).
The first category in Table 1, “Lucid Awareness Training,” involves an attempt to promote a particular attitude or state of consciousness during wakefulness. The idea is that once this attitude becomes firmly established while awake, it will be triggered during the dream. Examples of the target waking state of mind have ranged from Tholey’s emphasis on active critical attitude through a state of heightened receptive perceptual awareness that has been promoted by Peth and others. Although these two states seem to be at opposite ends of the active-passive continuum, Lucid Awareness Training may be the most effective when a synthesis of these two attitudes is developed. After noting the similarity of lucid dreaming to the various meditative states, often accompanied by alpha brain waves, Hunt and his associates suggested that lucid dreaming may be facilitated by training subjects prior to sleep, to increase alpha activity. This technique is known as “Alpha Feedback Training.”
Malamud and Sparrow independently utilized procedures in which subjects “redream” their previously unpleasant nonlucid dreams during the waking fantasy, as if they are lucid. Through this process the individual becomes familiar with a state of consciousness similar to the lucid dream. The Lucid Awareness Techniques may be carried out during the day or immediately prior to sleep onset.
The second major category, Intention and Suggestion Procedures, has recently been distinguished by Tholey. Under the heading of intention procedures, we have “Action Specific” Intention. Because the intention to become lucid is a rather vague goal to carry into the dream, the individual intends instead to perform a particular action in the dream which is associated with lucidity prior to sleep. Examples of this are Castaneda’s Hand-Focusing Technique and Hearne’s “False Awakening with State Testing” or “FAST” technique in which experimentally induced false awakenings are intended to promote lucidity. LaBerge’s “Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams” or “MILD” utilizes a mnemonic intention and visualization procedure after awakening from a dream in the early morning hours.
On the suggestion side, Joe Dane has formulated a two part strategy for utilizing posthypnotic suggestion and achieved some encouraging results that he will discuss. The majority of these intention and suggestion procedures are carried out right on the verge or just prior to falling asleep.
The last major category, “Cue-REMinding,” attempts to stimulate lucidity by introducing an external stimulus during REM sleep. These attempts have focused primarily on auditory and tactile cues. Hearne has developed a machine that delivers a mild electric shock to the wrist of the dreamer but the most common method used to induce lucidity with external stimuli has involved auditory cueing. LaBerge introduced an taped message to the dreamer, which repeated, “This is a dream,” so that it would directly remind the dreamer without awakening. Kueny recently completed a study utilizing four different auditory cues: one similar to LaBerge’s and another composed of a musical phrase. [Editor’s Note: This discussion occurred before LaBerge introduced his DreamLight device.]
David Cohen and I used auditory biofeedback during REM sleep. Initially our goal was to influence the frequency of eye movement in order to observe the effect on the dream content. In a pilot study the technique was highly associated with lucidity. Most of these “Cue REMinding” techniques involve the use of special equipment and sleep monitoring in the lab. Because of this requirement, these procedures might best be suited, as Tholey has suggested, to acquaint previously nonlucid subjects with their first lucidity experience.
Because all of these techniques may be more effective when practiced together rather than in isolation, combined techniques have utilized various combinations of these procedures. Finally, “Hypnagogic Lucidity Techniques” refer to procedures designed to retain continuous reflective awareness while falling asleep, thus inducing hypnagogic lucid dreams.
This outline is intended only to familiarize you with the range of techniques that have been proposed, and to provide some order to them. We must first know what we have to work with so we can systematically determine which are most effective. Because of time constraints, I have said little about the results obtained with each of these techniques. Although each major class has been met with some limited success, none has yet emerged as superior.
During this discussion, we will attempt to focus on the following three questions. First of all, “What common factors can we extract from the available induction techniques as the essential element(s) for lucidity induction?” Although I have presented three separate classes of techniques, there is a great deal of overlap between them. What are the common threads? Question number two: “How widely available is the lucid dream experience?” “Is the potential to develop lucid ability shared by most dreamers or only a minority?” And finally, if the time allows: “What are the potentials and limitations of the lucid dream experience in terms of frequency, duration, and content control?” First of all, let me introduce the first question. What factors can we extract and what are your experience with the different techniques?

Stephen LaBerge: Mnemonic Induction (MILD) Techniques Associated With External Stimulus

LaBerge: First, I’d like to make one or two comments about some of the points you’ve made. I think you’ve got a nice general outline of the various techniques. However, I would take exception to the idea that all these techniques are sort of good. I think some techniques you have listed there are just ideas and that nobody has ever shown that they work even once. For example, the FAST technique. As far as I know that was an idea described as a technique but nobody has said, “I did it and it worked for me.” So there’s no evidence for FAST. If anyone has done it, I would like to hear about it. I think that similar things can be said for the idea of alpha feedback. It was a good idea but results were not forthcoming that showed that it worked.
There are some techniques that I think the evidence suggests might be good for a specific group of people. Also, there are some techniques that might be useful for people who have never had lucid dreams before that will increase their likelihood of experiencing them so that they’ll have a lucid dream now and then. But there are other techniques that are designed for enabling one to have lucid dreams at will. The technique that I developed (MILD) was designed to do just that. My goal was to be able to have lucid dreams at will, not merely to increase their frequency. I wanted something that I’d be able to use in the laboratory when I wanted to have a lucid dream at a particular time. I’m convinced from my own experiences with trials using other approaches, being just as motivated, that the MILD is a particularly effective technique in the hands of people of a certain class, yet to be determined. Maybe it’s people who have had a lot of experience with lucidity. I don’t know. I do know that if I don’t use the MILD I can’t reliably count on having a lucid dream. Consequently, at a certain level of development, it’s a technique that could be useful. On the other hand, the MILD seems to be something that is pretty difficult to teach to people who have had no experience with lucid dreaming. Maybe there will be a different set of techniques that will be useful at different levels of development. That’s one thing that would be nice to be able to determine. What’s the appropriate developmental level? It is unlikely that we’ll have one technique that will do it.

Price: I agree. We may find that the lucid awareness techniques will tend to be more effective at increasing the general frequency of lucid dreams, whereas the intention, suggestion, and Cue REMinding will be more effective in triggering a lucid dream during a particular REM period.

LaBerge: Now to answer your question, “What do I see as the most effective kind of method?” I’ll briefly describe a study that was recently completed in collaboration with Robert Rich, of Stanford, who did his Honors Thesis in Psychology on this. We determined all of the things that we thought might help people to have lucid dreams and had subjects do them. Then we tested the subjects in the laboratory. The results were quite encouraging. We used subjects who did not report frequent lucid dreams so that we had some that had never had lucid dreams. Most of these people had had a few lucid dreams. They knew what they were but they didn’t have them with any degree of regularity. Of the the twenty subjects, who slept for one night only in the laboratory, something like twelve to fourteen lucid dreams were recorded. This is similar to the results that Joe has gotten. Now what did we do to produce these results? First we had a Waking-Training Procedure which was associated with a particular cue that would be applied during the REM state. The Waking-Training Procedure consisted of wearing a device on their ankle that was connected with a timer that caused a vibration to occur every 30 to 40 minutes throughout the day for 5 seconds each time. This was a reminder to tell the subjects to check whether or not they were dreaming at that moment. The test that we gave people to do this checking was as follows. We had digital watches on their hands which they would look at to see the time, which they then recorded. Then they would check to make sure their recorded list of numbers all made sense. It was a solid reality test which no dream would pass. In addition, because the answer’s always no, we wanted to do something else so that they wouldn’t get in the habit of thinking, ‘Well, I know it’s not a dream.’ So the next step was to ask them, “All right, you know this isn’t a dream, but if it were?” this is similar to Tholey’s technique of imagining it as if it were. We asked them to imagine, ‘The next time I’m in the laboratory, when I feel this it will have been a dream.’ We had a few other techniques where we asked them to ask themselves certain questions. We guided their thinking about how they were going to find out whether they were dreaming in ways other than the watch, to give them practice in the critical reflective technique. We had them do this for one or two days. We have reason to believe that two days is better. They then came into the laboratory. When they were in REM sleep we would apply the same stimulus to which they had developed a association. The key innovation is the association. In the past induction studies with some sort of external cue supplied no association to the cue. For instance, we’ve had some very odd situations where the cue seems to get into the dream but the dreamer doesn’t know that it means anything. I remember one subject who wrote out his dream report. I said, “Well, what happened there?” “Didn’t you hear it?” In his dream report it said, “These people are trying to say something to me but I don’t want to listen. They say you’re dreaming.” That’s what he wrote. He didn’t even recognize that until he woke up. He was hearing it in the dream. It’s not enough to have the information appear. Dreamers have to have an association made between the cue appearing and a particular reality testing action. We found, interestingly enough, that nobody in their dream felt the vibration and then looked at their watch and discovered their true state. Either people felt the vibration and thought, ‘Oh, yup, there it is. It’s the dream,’ or else the stimulus caused the dreams walls to start wobbling and other oddities and at that point people said “This is a dream.” It’s a simple condition, no higher consciousness is required. The association to the vibration is “check reality.”

Price: Did the stimulus ever lead to a micro-arousal or increased alpha?

LaBerge: In one case we got an awake type lucid dream, where there was a momentary awakening and then the person went right back into REM. Generally it didn’t occur. The problem of using external cues is, of course, you too often wake people up. If the stimulus is large enough to be effective then you frequently wake them up.

Question: How did you apply the vibrator?

LaBerge: We had it on the ankle at first but then we were waking people up too easily. It was one of these mechanical vibrators which we couldn’t start slowly enough. There was an inertia so that once it came on it was too much stimulation. Consequently, we put it at the foot of the bed, in the mattress. That seemed to work.
One reason that we wanted to try a tactile stimulus, was that the auditory system was more associated with monitoring the environment for danger while we sleep and so therefore, more likely to produce arousal.

Price: How did you determine exactly when to introduce the stimulus?

LaBerge: That’s a good question and points to one of the major deficiencies of the study. How do we decide when to turn it on? We’d turn it on after a REM burst or some other indication of physiological activation. Ideally this should be done with a computer which would be looking for certain levels of physiological activation and always apply the cue at that time. When we start doing studies like that, where we could easily reproduce the levels at which it was applied, we’ll make a lot better progress. Lucid dreams, when they occur, I shouldn’t say spontaneously because they’re usually induced by deliberate intention, occur with a certain level of physiological activation. You can’t be guaranteed of lucidity if the cue is applied at random. That’s another important consideration; applying the cue at the right time.

Price: We found that, during REM sleep, when presented the tone, sometimes the subject would just totally ignore the tone while at other times it would awaken him. That is a very touchy issue; trying to present the stimulus at just the right level and at just the right time. Christian, would like to describe some of the results you got with the Combined Technique?

Christian Bouchet: Tholey’s Combined Reflection Techniques

Bouchet: We had 93 subjects and a lot of them, 88, agreed to do Tholey’s Combined Technique. However, of the 88, only eight fulfilled the requirements of the method. In Tholey’s Combined Technique there are nine instructions about lucid awareness. In my opinion, it’s possible to divide these techniques into long term and short term. that is, if you follow the first three instructions, I mean those which modify the frame of mind during the day, you are going to have lucid dreams after a long time, but they will be durable. But if you use the short term techniques, you’ll have an immediate result but it won’t last. Consequently, the Combined Technique is useful for people who have never had lucid dreams. (But in fact, we had a better result with previously lucid dreamers.) It is useful because it is necessary for a nonlucid dreamer to have lucid dreams rapidly in order to be motivated to continue. But to consolidate the results, it is necessary to strengthen them with the first three techniques.
I think it is necessary to make having lucid dreams second nature. For example, you do it for five weeks and after this period you are accustomed to doing it and so sometimes you ask yourself, “Maybe I am dreaming right now? Maybe it’s a dream?” Your dream life may be modified if you change your mental habits. This is especially true when you use long term techniques.

Price: Did you find out, Stephen, as you developed MILD, that your daily attitude, changed in any way?

LaBerge: I do think so, because MILD is an exercise that is closely associated with the dream state. When you wake up from the dream, the idea is how to make a connection between where you are now and the next time you’re dreaming. So, optimally, it’s done immediately after waking from the dream because the physiology of REM persists into the period of waking. Furthermore, it’s been shown that when people are awakened from REM sleep and asked to tell a story, they tell very dream-like stories. So we want to associate it directly with the dream-state.

Price: There is another point that we had talked about earlier, the distinction between people who didn’t actually use the technique but still had lucid dreams. I think that would be an important point to make.

Bouchet: This experimentation was done by Roger Ripert and myself. The results will be presented to you by Roger. I will say a few words about the unexpected results as they have been obtained from people who didn’t do the test but did have lucid dreams. This kind of result can’t be inserted in a statistical analysis, as there is no data to support it, but it is necessary to take it into account.
First of all, I’ll give you a few figures to help you understand the scope of the project. (By the way, Roger Ripert had his own group and we mixed the results.) I contacted 93 persons to whom I explained lucid dreams and Paul Tholey’s method of inducing them. As I said, 88 agreed to participate. Only 53 began to work with the method. Of these 53, 35 gave up along the way, four didn’t answer and six have not finished the test because they didn’t start it on time. Only eight have completed the experiment. Their results have been incorporated into those of Roger’s group, in order to obtain a larger sample size for statistical analyses.
These figures are interesting because they illustrate two limits to statistical analysis. On the one hand statistical analyses only takes into account the results of those who concluded the experiment. the people who gave up also obtained good results and sometimes better than those who finished. On the other hand, when you examine the results, you might think that people who are able to obtain lucidity belong to one of the two categories: people who have concluded the test or those who have given it up. Actually obtaining lucid dreams occurred in all categories including those who did not undertake the experiment. It is necessary, therefore, to find the reasons behind their lack of participation. In our statistical analysis the number of successes was determined by the dreamers who finished the experiment. Unfortunately, the other successes in obtaining lucidity were not noted. They appeared in subsequent conversations with the subjects. Therefore, it is not possible to give the figures concerning those who have not practiced the technique. What are the causes for the induction of lucid dreams in subjects who have not followed the procedure?

Dane: Let me try and understand. You’re about to talk about those who didn’t complete the procedure, yet nonetheless developed lucid dreams.

Bouchet: Yes. To those who have partly followed the procedure we can assume that they have taken advantage of Tholey’s techniques in some way. It is not the same for the others, so we must examine the notion of the psychological field.
To understand the following, it is necessary to know why the test was not practiced. The majority of the subjects declared that they were short of time. But, in my view, the test needs little time: the subjects had only to note their dreams and to fill out the test paper. The instructions were short and should not have interfered with other activities. There was no obligation to record dreams except for the lucid dreams and the dreams associated with lucid dreams. We could presume that lucid dreams would not appear daily, at least in the beginning. In the same way, to fill up a paper is not difficult. The real reason was, in fact, a want of mental responsibility, which is completely different.
This lack of mental responsibility appears in two ways. First, it is a conscious refusal to use the first three prescriptions in spite of an apparently firm decision to contrary. The instructions stipulate that the subject should ask himself the critical question, which is “Am I dreaming or not?”, at least five to ten times a day. Some subjects can’t do it. Furthermore they say: “I try to see as in a dream what is around me, but I can’t conceive of the idea that it is a dream.” Some of them go further and say that when they try to do it they think that it is stupid. It is something like a natural rejection even if it takes the shape of verbal reasoning like: “It is clear that what is around me is not a dream.”
For some, this type of question is not a problem. They are those who see life as a movie, as a drama or a game, something to be played. For them, the idea of considering what is around them as a dream is not a case of perturbation because it is an attitude which is already existing in them. Even if they have not begun the technique, merely somebody speaking about the lucid dream with them can provoke spontaneous lucidity. It seems that one of the characteristics of the psychological field favorable to spontaneous lucidity may be found in the ease with which one can question the reality of the world without being anxious. It is a kind of serenity in face of the diversity of life. Spontaneous lucidity didn’t happen before to these individuals because when they think of the world as a movie, there was no need to transfer such thoughts to the dream state. But when they were asked to think of realism in terms of a dream, the transfer seems to be automatic.

Price: They already had the habit of thinking of the world as a game or film, which easily adapted to dreaming.

Dane: That observer rule, if you will, was built into their way of viewing life, and all you did was ask them to apply that one notch over.

Bouchet: The lack of mental responsibility is also the result of our mental concerns. Many of the participants told me that they were not able to follow the instructions because they were preoccupied with personal or professional concerns. These concerns did not allow them to think about the nature of reality. This last attitude is a little different from the preceding one. One who is addicted to his work to such a degree that he forgets himself is not able to think of anything but what he is doing because it is irrelevant to his work. This subject says that he expects a rest period or holiday to occur prior to the test. This kind of attitude characterizes the majority of the subjects who undertook the test. However, they have good intentions.
However, in my view conforming to the instructions of the test is not a hindrance to one’s personal work, or to the solution of diverse preoccupations. Following the instructions is felt as a hindrance when it is not practiced because it then appears as difficult. When the subject works on it he feelings of difficulty disappear, but when he stops, he forgets the ease of the method. Moreover, the use of this method may give the strength to pursue a task. Two of the subjects mentioned this and many of them found the solution to problems that they thought insurmountable.
This allows us to understand the second reason for spontaneous lucidity arising among the subjects who had not completed the test. When someone asks himself if he is dreaming or not, he very often takes a new point of view for familiar situations. Some subjects find advantages to this way of thinking so they spontaneously use this method in other circumstances. This attitude change is probably the cause of lucid dreams for the subjects who had never had such dreams before. We have, therefore, different types of reactions and/or different types of individuals. First, the people for whom Tholey’s instructions are natural; second, people who discover the applicability of it for their everyday life, and so they spontaneously adapt.
What has been said concerns observations from a great number of subjects who were individually questioned. This kind of work indicates directions for research not implied by the statistical analysis. For example, develop a simplified test to subjects who have to the profile given above, with the hope that we would obtain better results. Another possibility is to prepare the subjects in terms of these specific points before offering them the method for inducing lucid dreams.

Dane: What would be nice to know is the exact number of each type of subject for whom you’re getting success. I think you’re saying that the people in between have more trouble. Those are the ones that didn’t seem to get the results. They just stopped doing the technique.

Price: Another thing that this finding, if it holds up, could provide is a way of screening subjects with psychological assessment devices to see who holds these types of attitudes, to predict their success with a particular technique.

Dane: I think Christian’s findings will hold up. I think he may have something, as it seems parallel to Jayne’s finding that frequent lucid dreamers are characterized by “risk taking” as defined on the scale which Bob Van de Castle and I developed. We had defined it more as a sense of “adventuresomeness,” which according to Hilgard is also a characteristic of those with high hypnotic capacity. Intuitively, there seems to be some parallel between a sense of adventuresomeness in life and what Christian describes as living or seeing life as if it were a game or a play on the stage.

Roger Ripert: Results of Study Based on Combined Technique

Bouchet: Roger analyzed some of the data on some of the successful subjects for that same study. He will comment on those findings as well as those for another group.

Ripert: Research in sleep and dream laboratories on lucid dreaming (LD) means having experienced lucid dreamers, capable of inducing lucidity in experimental situations. Consequently, the development of an efficient induction technique is crucial. The Combined Reflection Technique developed by Paul Tholey apparently gives good results, as ordinary dreamers were reported to obtain their first lucid dream after four to five weeks of practice. Thus we decided to test this method.
This technique is based on the principle of a transfer from waking to dream, of a critical-reflective frame of mind concerning one’s state of consciousness. This frame of mind is developed during the waking state and also calls for formulating intention (as in LaBerge’s MILD technique) and internal programming of a specific action (as in Don Juan’s teachings).
For this study, 13 subjects, aged 20 to 50, tested Paul Tholey’s Combined Reflection Technique over a period of five to six weeks. Each participant received:

1. A list of nine instructions;

2. A daily checklist of instructions carried out;

3. A self-reflection scale (developed by Sheila Purcell) allowing the subject to score his dreams according to their degree of lucidity;

4. A complementary instructions as how to keep a dream diary and suggestions to help remember dreams (as per Patricia Garfield); and

5. A questionnaire to be filled out at the end of the experiment. The results are given in Table 2, later.

The subjects met with some difficulty comprehending the instructions and dealing with the amount of work involved. Consequently, they often only carried out part of the directives. Nevertheless, of the 13 subjects who completed the experiment, seven out of the eight subjects who had already experienced lucid dreams increased their LD frequency during the test. In addition, one of the five persons who had never had lucid dreams before did experience several during this period.
Preliminary statistical analysis indicated that there is a correlation between:

1. The frequency of LD during the experiment (F2), the number of critical questions in induced imaginary situations (Q3) and the number of times lucidity was programmed before going to sleep—this is particularly significant for the ordinary dreamer who attained lucidity during the test;

2. The number of critical questions (Q1, Q2) and the number of inductions in the early morning hours (P2). For four subjects who had already experienced LD, this technique was often successful.
Although no firm conclusions can be drawn, due to the limited number of subjects, we can say that the most efficient techniques appear to be asking the critical question in ordinary dreamers of LD programming in the early morning hours for those who had already experienced lucid dreams.
As Paul Tholey emphasizes, it is not so important to frequently ask oneself the critical question as it is to develop a permanent critical attitude towards one’s state of consciousness.
Several of the lucid dreams obtained were published in Oniros Bulletin [Editor’s Note: This French language publication is available from: Roger Ripert, Centre Oniros, B.P. 30, 93450 11e St. Denis, France].

Joseph Dane: Posthypnotic Suggestion Combined With MILD

Price: Joe, would you like to comment on your results? And could you say a little bit about the second question. How universal do your results suggest the lucidity potential to be?

Dane: Remember my results are with nonlucid dreamers. However, they are a select portion of the population in that they are all in the upper 50th percentile on hypnotic susceptibility. So we still need to do similar experimentation with the other half of the population. Nonetheless, it’s now clear that within the laboratory context lucid dreaming can indeed be trained, and with “punch,” if you will. In one night you can get folks hopping to it!
I like Stephen’s description of the problem of whether lucid dreaming is universal or not. Probably everybody can swim or ride a bike or whatever, within certain limitations, such as do you have the physiological capacity for it, whether or not you’re exposed to the opportunity to do it, whether or not you have had any prior experiences that would make that kind of activity attractive for you, etc. For example, have you ever been pushed in the water and nearly drowned? If you have, you’re not going to enjoy swimming. So it would be if you’ve had bad nightmares, such as the Vietnam veterans. I think Ken Dennis was talking about wanting to talk with Vietnam veterans and train lucidity in those who are having repetitive traumatic nightmares. Their response was, “Hell, no, I don’t want to go back into those nightmares. I want them stopped.” Ken mentioned a woman that was having dreams about two friends being killed on motorcycles. Her fear was that going back into that dream would simply be a revivification of something that she couldn’t change in the dream any more than could she change it in waking life. So it wasn’t attractive. In any event, probably most people can, to some degree, swim, ride a bike or have a lucid dream. But how motivated are they? How trained, etc?
One thing I’d like to do first, is to clarify the techniques we used which were effective; what some of the results were; and tease out some specifics. In the first phase of our work, we used Stephen’s MILD technique and an earlier version of post-hypnotic suggestion with 20 experience lucid dreamers. With respect to the MILD, there was one consistent finding within the experimental context, which was consistent with Roger’s findings and also consistent with what Ken Moss was telling me. However effective MILD may be in the long term, it seems to be very cumbersome for use in an experimental context. Out of Roger’s 83 initial participants, only eight actually completed the suggested techniques. Likewise, I asked ten in my group who were going to use the MILD to use it on any seven out of twelve consecutive nights. Nobody could do it. And these folks were motivated. But they were honest about whether they were doing it or not. Six was the maximum number of nights anybody could do it in the assigned time frame. So there seems to be something to be learned there if you’re wanting to produce results in the lab immediately.
In the second phase of our work (I described the methodology earlier), we found that both waking suggestion and waking suggestion in combination with posthypnotic suggestion were effective with formerly nonlucid, hypnotically susceptible females. So under the right circumstances, both posthypnotic suggestion and waking instruction can be effective for lucid dream induction. With posthypnotic suggestion, what seems to be working is, first, you give the posthypnotic suggestion to have a lucid dream. You implant the direct suggestion. The other thing you seem to be doing is actually inducing changes in the dream content. You’re alerting the dreamer to what’s happening in the dream and that becomes a cue. It’s a little bit like classical conditioning, if you will. And even that is just another way of looking at posthypnotic suggestion. In my study, I used a hypnotically receptive state to establish the dreamer’s receptiveness to recognizing, or giving importance to, a dream symbol. Now with respect to that, out of the 15 hypnotic subjects or people who were exposed to hypnosis, ten had a dream symbol in their dreams. And in seven of those instances the dream symbol was related to inducing lucidity. So we were changing the dream content with posthypnotic suggestion.
For example, one woman had a hypnotic dream about a woman who was spinning round in a black cape. That was her hypnotic dream about hypnosis. Now this was a young woman who was going to be a a psychology major. But she was also very different towards me and this whole idea of lucid dreaming. There was a curious sort of juxtaposition between her espoused interests and the fact that she would kind of downplay the whole idea of lucidity, its application for personal growth, etc., these things just didn’t work right with her. So I asked her a bit more about the hypnotic dream, and she said, “Well, I was kind of over in my little world looking down on her, looking down on this woman who was spinning around in a black robe.” My association was, “Wow, she’s looking down on that woman who is kind of an archetypal image of trance induction (whirling dervishes, etc.), and I feel like she’s looking down on this whole experiment.” When I shared my impressions with her, she bought the idea and in fact said her family was pretty much fundamentalist and thought of her interests in the powers of the mind as a “black force” in life. On the last night during hypnosis, she did in fact encounter that symbol, and asked for its assistance in enlisting a lucid dream. In her subsequent lucid dream, she reported, “. . . we (the experimenter and the subject) were talking and there was a woman that we both saw go into the basement of a church. And in the dream I said, ‘I want to find out if that woman flew last night.’” This was presumably because part of the hypnotic suggestion was to “turn off the automatic pilot in your dreams and to fly with awareness.” In any event, she recognized, “Wait a minute, there’s nobody else in this experiment. There’s just me. This is a dream.” And she said to me in the dream, “I’ll go and find her.” And she did. She went down to the basement and asked the woman, “Did you fly in your dreams last night?” And the woman said something like, “You know, it’s just amazing what you can do if you just broaden your perspective.” And there, the dream ended.
In other words, there are numerous examples where the symbol itself did not necessarily appear in the dream, but where the dream content or interactions seemed to clearly allude to the dream symbol. Now, by contrast, you don’t seem to change the dream content with waking instruction. It’s more like Tholey’s Hypnagogic Imagery State and what other people have talked about, where you’re establishing sensitivity to sleep onset phenomena and then, similar to biofeedback technique, you extend that sensitivity into dream awareness. So you establish sleep onset awareness, and then extend that into dream awareness.
With respect to comparing the effectiveness of posthypnotic and waking suggestion for lucid dream induction, there were an equal number of subjects who were successful with both techniques. However, five very important post hoc measures indicated that, from a qualitative point of view, the hypnotically associated lucid dreams were far superior to non-hypnotically associated lucid dreams:

1. They occurred more frequently in the late REM periods;

2. They lasted longer;

3. They required less work by the experimenter;

4. Post-experimental lucid dream frequency was greater; and

5. The personal relevance and intensity of the lucid dreams were greater.

LaBerge: I’d like to make one final observation based on the work that Jayne summarized on personality differences. The first thing she said is that the variance accounted for by personality factors is very small. What does that mean? It means all of the major variance has got to do with factors like interest, If you looked at the personalities of piano players, you wouldn’t get very interesting results, because there are lots of different reasons why you might or might not play the piano. I think the same thing is true of lucid dreaming, that the capacity is general, that everybody could develop it. The question is, are they interested in doing so.

Price: I would agree with that and just say, three general factors seem to contribute to increasing one’s chances of becoming lucid. First, the dreamer must value his or her dream life and develop good dream recall, perhaps by keeping a journal. Secondly, one must be very motivated to achieve the state. Dreamers have to have some understanding of what they are trying to achieve and really want to do it. Thirdly, they need some method or technique to trigger the state, whether it be through lucid awareness to develop long term lucidity, an intention procedure, or a Cue REMinding procedure.

######

###### Reference

Gackenbach, J.I. & LaBerge, S.L. (Eds.) (1988). Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. New York: Plenum.

##### III.A.2 Induction of Lucid Dreams, Including the Use of the DreamLight

###### STEPHEN LABERGE and LYNNE LEVITAN

Stanford University, California

LaBerge: Today I would like to talk in a somewhat broader context than just the use of the DreamLight. I will give you a sense of why I have been working on developing this device and my view of the induction of lucid dreams in general. In case there is anyone present who doesn’t know what a lucid dream is—it is a dream in which you know you are dreaming while it is happening.
I started my own journey into the field of lucid dreaming about ten years ago when I was at Stanford University and needed a topic for my Ph.D. dissertation. I settled on lucid dreaming, a phenomenon that had not, as far as I knew, been researched yet. I had had a few experiences with lucid dreaming, enough to give me a great deal of personal interest in it. I began some experiments with inducing lucid dreams in myself and was motivated to have lucid dreams in the laboratory so I could study them for my dissertation.
When I started out trying to induce lucid dreams, all I had to go on was the idea from Patty Garfield’s abstracts and books that she had been able to increase her frequency of lucid dreaming by autosuggestion, just by telling herself, “I’m going to have a lucid dream tonight.” I found that when I simply reminded myself before going to sleep, “I want to have a lucid dream tonight,” I would have lucid dreams approximately once a week. However, notice on this chart [Figure 1] of my lucid dream frequency during the three years of my dissertation project, at Point A I reached ten lucid dreams per month, a considerable leap from the periods around it.
The explanation for this sudden improvement is that that was the time when I was writing my dissertation proposal, in which I was claiming that I was going to be able to learn to have lucid dreams for this study. In other words I was extremely motivated to have lucid dreams, and it made a big difference in my success. But, as soon as I finished the proposal, my lucid dream frequency dropped back down to where it had been, because of the difficulty of maintaining such a high level of motivation. At Point B on the chart, where you see a similar sudden increase in the number of lucid dreams I was having, I was in the laboratory at Stanford doing my dissertation research. Again, my motivation soared.
But, you notice, in addition to the two outstanding high points due to motivational factors, there is a general increase in my lucid dreaming frequency as time passes. It looks like I was somehow learning how to do it, and at about this point marked Part Two I began to realize what it was I was doing when I was doing it right. I had begun with the idea of using a sort of autosuggestion: “Tonight I will have a lucid dream.” However, I had no idea of how I was going to do it, and so it was difficult to convince myself that I really was going to have a lucid dream. When I discovered what I was doing when I succeeded, it turned out to be a very simple thing. It was that I was setting the intention of remembering to do something later. Once I got the mental set right, my lucid dreaming rate started increasing more, and I developed the method I call Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams, or MILD.
MILD involves using visualization to see yourself in a dream recognizing that you are dreaming—to help remind yourself to do something, i.e. realize you are dreaming, in your next dream period. The procedure is to wake up from a dream and using that same dream you just wakened from, visualize yourself back in the dream, see yourself becoming lucid, and tell yourself, “Next time I’m dreaming, I want to recognize I’m dreaming.” I found that with practice when I used this technique I was able to have lucid dreams on any night I wished.
Others have had similar results with related methods, showing that once your mental set is correct, becoming lucid in dreams is not a difficult process. However, it is no trivial condition: “Once your mental set is correct “ The method we are using to attain that mental set is remembering to do something in the future. If you think of this in terms of the waking state, how do you remember to do things in the future? You write yourself notes, or leave yourself reminders. If you want to take something with you when you are going out the door, you put it by the door so that it is there to remind you when you need to remember it. The problem is, how can we remind people at the time they need to be reminded, namely, while they are dreaming, that they want to recognize that they are dreaming? How do we get a cue into a dream?
One example of what we have used is goggles with flashing red lights worn by the sleeper. When the person is in a REM period, dreaming, we apply this flashing light, and if the light is incorporated into the dream and if the dreamer recognizes the light correctly, he will realize that he is dreaming. The light can be incorporated into the dream in different ways.
Now I want to show you the device we have been using for home studies (called the DreamLight) and report our results with it so far. It consists of a mask you wear over your eyes while you are sleeping, which picks up eye movements with an infrared eye-movement detection device, and when enough eye movements occur that the computer in the box “believes” you are in REM sleep, the lights in the mask flash. Meanwhile, back in your dream the light may appear somehow, perhaps in a transformed way—if you recognize it, you will realize you are dreaming, or, if your mind is not prepared, you might not . . . for example, I might think there was something wrong with the projector here, and say, “Turn that thing off, please!” If my mind is prepared, and I’m really ready to remember it, then I’ll say, “Aha! That is the DreamLight. That means I’m dreaming right now.” And then I can remember, “Oh, yes, I went to sleep wearing the DreamLight.”
We did a study with the DreamLight and 49 subjects who attended eight weekly group meetings. During the course of the group, they had the opportunity to use the DreamLight several times. The average number of times the DreamLight was used per subject was six nights, and each subject also contributed an average of thirty nights of data from nights when they did not use the DreamLight. On those non-DreamLight nights they may have been using other induction techniques, such as MILD or a modification of the reality testing procedure recommended by Paul Tholey.
This slide (Figure 2) shows the frequencies of lucid dreams per night per subject during the study. You can see that lucid dreams are more frequent on nights when the subjects used the DreamLight, even though there is a smaller sample of DreamLight nights than non-DreamLight nights. In fact, if you take the average rate of lucid dreaming on non-DreamLight nights, and multiply that expected rate by the total number of nights the DreamLight was used, that gives you the expectation of how many lucid dreams subjects would have had on the same number of nights using the DreamLight—if it had no effect. But, you can see a striking difference between this expected number of lucid dreams and the actual numberobserved for the DreamLight nights. Using the expected baseline lucid dreaming rate, only two of the 49 subjects would have had lucid dreams on DreamLight nights, rather than the observed 19.
There were three techniques that we were using in this study: the DreamLight, reality testing and MILD. For each subject we did a correlation between the number of times that they had lucid dreams and their use of the DreamLight or not (this was a dichotomous variable) and then the number of times they tested reality on the day before, or the number of times they did MILD during the night. Then we averaged the correlation coefficients for however many subjects there were in each comparison. Not everybody did all the techniques, so there were fewer than 49 correlation coefficients. Only subjects who had at least one lucid dream could be used, so we have N’s of 34 to 36.
The averages of the correlation coefficients across subjects are shown in Table 1. The T-tests test the significance of the difference of each average correlation coefficient from zero. If there is no relationship for a given technique between the technique and lucid dream frequency, half the subjects would have a positive correlation, and half would have negative, and the average correlation would be non-significant.
The DreamLight shows a small, but significant correlation coefficient of about +.10—it is statistically significant, and a majority of subjects had positive correlations between DreamLight use and lucid dream success. In the last column, the Z-score takes into account the fact that people contributed different numbers of nights of data—somebody who used the DreamLight fifteen nights, which was the maximum number, had more data for the DreamLight nights than somebody who used it only two nights. We wanted to weight the data according to how many nights of data there were for each subject, so we took the p values (the probability) for each of the correlation coefficients, converted them to standard scores, and then used a standard statistical method to determine the overall probability of the occurrence of that collection of standard scores. Again, we have a significant relationship shown for use of the DreamLight and lucid dream frequency.
Now, let’s look at the results for reality testing. This is a modification of Tholey’s variant of this idea, wherein one asks, “How do I know I’m not dreaming right now?” throughout the day, and then does a visualization while repeating to oneself, “All right, I think I’m not dreaming right now, but later on when I am dreaming, I’m going to remember to do this [a reality test].” It is a bit of a combination between reality testing and a mnemonic intention exercise. Although there were two or three subjects who had a significant positive relationship between lucid dream success and frequency of reality testing, overall the group showed no relationship. About half the group had positive correlations and half negative, with no statistical significance. So, we found no support for the usefulness of reality testing for inducing lucid dreams in this particular group.
MILD, on the other hand, showed the largest overall effect—the largest group correlation was between lucid dream frequency and the practice of MILD (r = .12, p < .001). This success may have to do with the fact that people had more of a chance to work with MILD than with the DreamLight, but, nevertheless, there was a significant relationship both for the probabilities and for the actual correlation coefficients. Thus, we found evidence that use of the DreamLight and use of MILD were both effective in increasing the rate of lucid dreaming.
Having looked at the rate of lucid dreaming for four conditions, with Dream-Light, reality testing, MILD, and no technique, we know that the DreamLight was effective and so was MILD. How did people do on the nights without the Dream-Light or MILD? This baseline lucid dreaming rate was 3.7% meaning that on these nights, if we had 100 people in the group, we would expect them to have a total of about fourlucid dreams among them. In the condition in which the DreamLight was used without mental preparation with MILD, the rate went up to 5.5%. Using MILD without the DreamLight produced a rate of 13%, and the combination of MILD with the DreamLight resulted in the highest rate of 20%. Our interpretation of this is that using the DreamLight without MILD means using the DreamLight with insufficient mental preparation, so that when the light flashes, even if you see it, you won’t know what it means. It will be just a meaningless bit of dream content that you need to explain away.
Thus it is clear that, in this case, a reminder is not going to help you unless you are ready to remember it already. There is a saying, “A word to the wise will suffice, but for a fool a thousand explanations will never serve.” Of course, we can be either wise or foolish depending on our preparation and what we bring to any task. Some people have the impression that the DreamLight is some sort of machine that will force people to have lucid dreams, and some have expressed the concern, “Well, what if you are not really ready to have lucid dreams, then what will happen?” The answer is, very probably nothing. You’ll have a dream in which you dream about the room light flashing, or something else you can explain away, but you won’t become lucid unless your mind is prepared. Whether or not there is a developmental aspect —some psychological development has to occur before you can have lucid dreams, I really don’t know. We have no evidence bearing on that question.
We do know that the mental concentration you put into it on the night before—especially the night before and perhaps the day before as well—you try to have a lucid dream is crucially important. If you are trying to remember to do something in the dream state, then, obviously, preparing your mind right before bed and each time you wake up during the night will be by far the most effective. It may not make any difference if right now, for example, you all very strongly prepare your minds, “I’m going to have a lucid dream tonight, I’m going to remember to do this,” because if tonight when you go to bed you don’t think about it, this preparation will be diluted by the day’s subsequent experiences, and will have little, if any, effect. Thus, in order to maximize our results with the DreamLight lucid dream induction tool, we will be focusing on the preparation immediately before bed, and during the night.
I would now like my associate, Lynne Levitan, to describe a bit of the phenomenology of what happens with the light incorporations. The study I just described was one in which people used the DreamLight for one to fifteen nights, but we have some people who have used the DreamLight in various incarnations over the past several years, and had a great deal of success with it. I’d like you to get a bit of an impression of what this is like.

Levitan: I’ve used the DreamLight about 130 times in the last three years, in several different versions. You can see in Figure 3 that I clearly have more success in having lucid dreams when I’m using the DreamLight. The following results include no information on mental preparation; we can assume that I wasn’t really paying much attention to mental preparation.
I have data for 101 nights that I used the DreamLight. On 59 of the nights I had incorporations. On 40 of the nights I had lucid dreams, so we can assume that on 19 of those nights I could have had a lucid dream, but I was stupid.
Table 1 shows the various ways in which the light was incorporated. The category here with the biggest percentage is “light emanating from a dream object.” The red light that you saw here actually comes into the dream and becomes part of the dream. If you don’t have any idea that you are wearing the DreamLight, it is just part of the dream. It is interesting to look at the various ways that the DreamLight can incorporate. A classic one is the sun—or reflections of the sun. The main thing about theincorporation is that it is very bright. You see a bright reflection in a mirror, or I even saw a bright reflection from a photograph of the sun in my eyes—in some cases I thought it was just the sun in my eyes, but usually I realized, “Oh, that’s the DreamLight,” probably because it was so bright. One theme I’ve heard others report, too—the TV malfunctions and flashes in your eyes. In one case of mine there was a Star Trek episode on television, and the enemies had devised an exciting new weapon that produced something I called the “retinal flash.” Another common case for me in this category is the popping of flashbulbs—someone is taking pictures. And, I’ve seen slide projectors projected directly in my eyes. A case in which I failed was: I was at a concert, sitting in a stadium on the bleachers, and it seems there was an arc lamp sitting right in front of me flashing into the audience. Now I don’t know why anyone would put an arc lamp facing up into the audience, but I never figured out it was the DreamLight until I awoke.
The second most common category, light superimposed on the scene without a dream source, is pretty mundane. You simply see light in your eyes, and it is pretty obvious that it is the DreamLight. Interestingly, though, it is not always red. I’ve seen it as white or green as well. One time I saw it as four red dots hanging in front of my left eye—the interesting thing about that was that the mask I was wearing at the time only had two LEDs, rather than the usual four, so clearly my mind was still constructing away.
The third category is unaltered incorporations of the light stimulus. We don’t have any statistics on this, but my guess would be that this is the easiest type to recognize, because it looks exactly like you are wearing the mask—except you are walking around and you suddenly see this stimulus hanging in front of your face. On the other hand, strange things happen like you see the light and take off the mask, in your dream, and you say, “Oh no, I’m not asleep, but it’s still flashing!”
The fourth category is interesting—you see the light as psychedelic or geometric patterns. I’ve seen absolutely glorious brilliant patterns in concentric circles, and just fascinating geometric shapes covering the entire field of vision. I’ve seen traffic lights and flash bulbs turn into psychedelic displays.
The final category is alterations of the ambient light level in the dream. In one interesting case, I was walking down a street on a very dark night when suddenly it was as bright as day and I was floating about a hundred feet above the street. I said, “Well, I must be dreaming!” In another curious case, I was talking to Fariba [Bogzaran] in a room when she said, “I think we need some more light in here,” and suddenly the room was filled with light. Now, how she did that, I have no idea!

##### III.A.3 A Comparison of Waking Instruction and Posthypnotic Suggestion for Lucid Dream Induction

###### JOSEPH R. DANE and ROBERT L. VAN DE CASTLE

University of Virginia Medical School, Charlottesville

The following is a summary of the methodology, results and conclusions of a dissertation . . . available through University Microfilms.
The original purpose of this study was to evaluate two techniques for lucid dream induction in formerly nonlucid dreamers during one night in the sleep laboratory. However, efforts to correct a suspected flaw in one of these techniques fortuitously led to the development and comparison of four experimental conditions.

Method

Subjects were 15 pairs of matched hypnotically susceptible females (ages 18– 32) reporting recall of at least one dream a month and no prior experience with lucid dreaming. Only females were used All subjects were in the upper fiftieth percentile of hypnotic susceptibility as indicated by a score of 5 or above on the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form C (SHSS:C).
The initial methodology called for comparing the effects of lucid dream induction capacity via Waking Instructions (WI) with that of Waking Instructions plus Posthypnotic Suggestion (WI + PHS) (N = 15 per group). Posthypnotic Suggestion included generalized reinforcement of Waking Instruction and was individually administered by the experimenter the night of each subject’s participation in the lab. PHS also provided a hypnotic encounter with a personalized “dream symbol” before going to sleep in the laboratory. During this encounter, subjects were instructed to ask for their symbol’s help in becoming lucid during their dreams that night.
Personal symbols were developed based on discussion of the subjects’ imagery which had occurred in response to item 6 of the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form C (viz., “go to sleep and have a dream about hypnosis”). The rationale given for development and use of this symbol was twofold. First, lucid dream induction was described as a process of enhancing cooperation between “waking” consciousness and “dream” consciousness, such that dream consciousness would be willing to allow the “intrusion” of waking consciousness into its presence. Second, it was explained that the imagery being discussed reflected the subject’s individualized view of her own dream consciousness, and that symbols based on this imagery could provide a useful “ally” in eliciting the desired cooperation. Other than differences in the dream symbols themselves, hypnotic procedures and suggestions were the same for all participants.
The Original Waking Instructions (OWI) were likewise administered by the experimenters on the nightof each woman’s participation in the lab. OWI focused on maintaining an inquisitive attitude toward one’s experience and on evaluating that experience throughout the night by constantly asking, “Am I dreaming now? Is this a dream?” In order to reinforce this focus, and to establish a habit of communication with the experimenter, OWI also directed subjects to give a prearranged ocular signal whenever they found themselves asking this question, regardless of how they themselves might answer the question. The intent was that the sleepers could then be wakened by the experimenters and receive feedback about whether or not they had indeed been dreaming, thus gradually increasing their awareness of subtle alterations in subjective experience as they approached the dream state. Subjects were also told to continue signaling every minute to a minute and a half for as long as they remained lucid, and that they would be wakened for a dream report about a minute and a half after what appeared to be their final signal.
Efforts to correct a suspected flaw in OWI (i.e., research participants’ frequently reported failure to signal when uncertain whether they were awake or asleep) led to development of the Revised Waking Instructions (RWI). RWI consisted essentially of the following stepwise procedure:

1. Signal whenever you think you might be asleep (as opposed to “asleep and dreaming”);

2. Signal only when you are asleep and experiencing “imagery” of any sort (e.g., random or “hypnagogic” imagery); and

3. Signal only when you are asleep and truly “dreaming.”

The Revised Waking Instructions thus constituted a sort of biofeedback-like procedure wherein verbal feedback from the experimenter at the time of waking the women from their signaling served to guide the subjects’ progression from one stage of learning to the next. Considerable attention was given to teaching the distinction between random, isolated imagery and true “dreams,” which were defined as the presence of an ongoing, “hallucinated” scenario consisting a more or less linked series of events or experiences which the subject subjectively experienced as “real” rather than consciously made up or imagined.

###### Results

Ultimately, four experimental conditions were established and compared:

A. Posthypnotic Suggestion (PHS) + Original Waking Instructions (OWI); N = 8.

B. Posthypnotic Suggestion (PHS) + Revised Waking Instructions (RWI); N = 7.

C. Original Waking Instructions (OWI) only; N = 8.

D. Revised Waking Instructions (RWI) only; N = 7.

There was no significant difference in the average level of hypnotic susceptibility between any of these conditions (A = 8.6, B = 9.3, C = 8.1, D = 8.7), nor were there any differences between these conditions with respect to age or level of dream recall reported prior to the experiment.
The majority of participants in all conditions reported more than once for each lucid dream. A complex measure of interrater reliability of signal detection between the experimenters and blind raters was found to be comparable to that reported in earlier studies by Hearne (1978) and LaBerge (1980).
Lucid dreams which were reported during the study were divided into three types, based upon whenocular signaling actually occurred:

Unambiguous REM Lucid Dreams (UREM LD): Lucidity and ocular signaling occurred during unambiguous REM sleep;

Ambiguous REM Lucid Dreams (AREM LD): Lucidity apparently occurred during unambiguous REM sleep, but ocular signaling occurred immediately after arousal from REM sleep;

Non-REM Lucid Dreams (NREM LD): Lucidity and ocular signaling occurred during non-REM sleep.

Substantiation and discussion of the above classification system, especially that of “non-REM” lucid dreams, will be discussed elsewhere. It should be emphasized that all reports of random, isolated (hypnagogic) imagery were excluded from analysis.
Table 1 indicates the number of each type of lucid dream reported in the various conditions, with the number of subjects reporting each type indicated in parentheses. Note that since most subjects reported more than one type of dream, the total number of subjects indicated in Table 1 is greater than the total number of subjects in the study (n = 30).
The basic unit of measure for analysis was the number of subjects in each condition who reported a lucid dream (only two lucid dream reports were not verified by ocular signaling). Table 2 indicates the number of subjects in each condition who reported at least one lucid dream of one or more of the three types.
When compared to the effects of Original Waking Instructions (Condition C) (binomial test and Fisher’s exact test), each of the three other conditions were independently significant at the .05 level or better (it should be stressed that these three conditions all remain significant even if non-REM lucid dreams are excluded from analysis. Thus, since OWI alone (Condition C) was not successful, PHS (Condition A), PHS + RWI (Condition D) were all independently successful with these formerly nonlucid dreamers.
No statistically significant difference was found between any pairwise combination of these three techniques. That is, PHS, RWI and their combination were all equally effective with respect to the number of subjects who reported lucid dreams. However, the five measures which are discussed below suggested that results associated with PHS (Conditions A and B) were qualitatively superior to those obtained with either form of Waking Instruction alone (Conditions C and D).
First, remember that participants sometimes signaled and were wakened prior to signaling from their first lucid dream. In what amounts to primarily the “PHS only” condition (Condition A), the first signal given by all successful subjects occurred during their first lucid dream. However, four of the six successful subjects using RWI only (Condition D), and all of the seven successful subjects using PHS + RWI (Condition B) signaled one or more times from nonlucid dream states (e.g., during hypnagogic imagery at sleep onset after initially going to sleep but prior to signalling from their first lucid dream. Thus PHS tended to require less “priming” than did RWI. That is, PHS tended to establish dream awareness directly, without ongoing intervention from the experimenter in the form of verbal feedback over the course of several wakenings. RWI, on the other hand, tended to first establish and refine subjects’ sensitivity to the subjective changes which occurred during sleep onset and to then “extend” this sensitivity into the ongoing awareness of dreaming.
Second, all REM-associated lucidity (i.e., UREM LDs and AREM LDs) in the non-PHS condition(Conditions C and D) occurred prior to three A.M. and no later than the third REM period of the night. Yet 6 of the 14 REM-associated lucid dreams in two PHS conditions (Conditions A and B) occurred between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. and during the fourth to the sixth REM periods of the night. This was true despite the greater frequency of four or more REM periods having occurred in the non-PHS conditions than in the PHS-related conditions. It is thought that most spontaneous lucid dreaming occurs during the later REM periods of the night (Garfield, 1974; Hearne, 1978); LaBerge, 1980; van Eeden, 1969). Since late REM periods are typically more emotionally involved than early REM periods, it may be “easier” to have a lucid dream during an early, less emotionally distracting REM period. PHS-induced lucidity may therefore be more “potent” than that induced via involvement with effective (i.e., “Revised”) waking instructions.
In this connection, it was also noted that when compared with either PHS “alone” (Condition A) or RWI alone (Condition D), the combination of PHS and RWI (Condition B) tended to produce fewer REM LDs and to produce more NREM LDs. Thus the combination of PHS and RWI appeared to restrict or localize lucid dreaming to NREM sleep. This finding was attributed to the reinforcing effect of PHS on increased awareness of sleep onset phenomena which was so strongly emphasized in the Revised Waking Instructions. This emphasis may have tended to narrow the dreamer’s focus to NREM dreams.
A third measure of qualitative difference between PHS and non-PHS effects was that post experimental levels of lucid dream frequency were higher in the PHS related conditions (Conditions A and B) than in the non-PHS related conditions (conditions C and D). This was true both in terms of the number of subjects report-ing lucid dreams at various follow-up times and in terms of the number of post experimental lucid dreams reported per person.
Fourth, as indicated by the participants subjective reports and by the length of time between multiple ocular signals (when they occurred), lucidity tended to last longer within a given dream in the PHS related conditions than in the non-PHS related conditions.
And fifth, the lucid dreams of the PHS related conditions showed higher levels of intensity, personal relevance and personal involvement than did those of the non-PHS conditions. That is, affect and visual imagery tended to be more vivid and in-tense, experimentation within the dream and manipulation of dream content occurred more frequently, and dream content had more personal relevance and immediacy than was typically the case in the lucid dreams of those not exposed to PHS.
Nonetheless, it should be emphasized that with all three successful induction techniques (PHS, RWI and PHS + RWI), enduring benefits of lucidity were demon-strated on nightmares and other forms of negative affect within dreams. For exam-ple, one PHS subject was able to end a life history of recurrent nightmares through independent use of her lucidity training at home.
One final qualitative difference of note between PHS and WI related conditions was the manner in which lucidity was usually triggered. PHS tended to induce lu-cidity by altering dream content in a form which the individual was trained to recog-nize (e.g., inclusion of the dream symbol), while WI tended to alter the dreamer’s tendency to be critically aware of ongoing experience in general.

Conclusions

It is important to remember that the results of this study may not be widely generalizable, since the study sample represents only females in the upper fiftieth percentile of hypnotic susceptibility. Nonetheless, it is now apparent that dream lucidity is not simply an innate ability. Some hypnotically susceptiblesubjects can learn to dream lucidly within one night in the sleep laboratory and can maintain and even extend this learning well beyond the laboratory experience.
It also now appears that the range of sleep physiology which can accompany lucid dreaming includes NREM sleep. While NREM lucid dreams have not been prevalent in earlier laboratory studies, their presence in this study was probably due to the focus in Revised Waking Instructions on sleep onset phenomena combined with the experimenters’ clear communication to subjects that dreaming can occur in both REM and NREM sleep. Non-REM lucid dreams are clearly possible, and in some instances, their level of intensity and emotional involvement is comparable to or even exceeds that typically experienced in REM lucid dreams.
With respect to specific techniques, both Posthypnotic Suggestion and Revised Waking Instructions can produce lucid dreams in equal numbers of subjects, but PHS in conjunction with personal symbols appears to induce a more clinically potent and enduring form of lucid dreaming. Combining PHS and RWI appears to interfere with the optimal performance of both techniques.
It should also be remembered that signaling played a significant role in eliciting and sometimes even maintaining lucidity. Since signaling was also reported to help reactivate lucidity at home following the experiment, efforts to communicate with the waking world from the dream state may be an important key to eliciting dream lucidity.
And finally, with respect to clinical and personal applications, the induction of lucid dreaming shows considerable promise, since it can establish and enhance a new level of active cooperation between waking and dreaming consciousness. Given the apparent occurrence of ocular signaling in immediate proximity to “delta wave” (Stage 3 and 4) sleep, lucidity training may even have potential for the treatment of night terrors and sleep walking.

References

Garfield, P. (1974). Creative dreaming. New York: Ballantine.

LaBerge, S. (1980). Lucid dreaming: An exploratory study of consciousness during sleep. Doctoral Dissertation, Stanford University. (University Microfilms International, 8024691).

van Eeden, F. (1913). A study of dreams. In C.T. Tart (Ed.), Altered states of consciousness. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co., Inc.

### Section B: The Sleep Laboratory

##### III.B.1 Physiological Mechanisms of Lucid Dreaming

###### STEPHEN LABERGE

Stanford University, California

For those of you here who aren’t familiar with the general approach we have been using in our research on lucid dreaming I will briefly describe it. We’ve been having talented lucid dreamers, like Beverly Kedzierski, enter the dream state on a particular mission. Before they go to sleep we arrange that once they realize they are dreaming they will make an eye movement signal by moving their eyes left, right, left, right.
Figure 1 is a typical example of such a lucid dream—it’s actually a little better than average, because we have the last 8 minutes of a 30 minute rapid eye movement (REM) period. When the subject woke up he reported that he had made five signals, which you can see in the part of the dream preceding the awakening. The channels we recorded for this experiment were: an electroencephalogram (EEG) channel on the top of the chart, two eye movement (electro-oculargram, or EOG) channels in the middle, and chin muscle tone (electromyogram, or EMG) on the bottom. For those of you who are not familiar with sleep research, one can determine what stage of sleep a person is in using the classical scoring by means of these three parameters. The part of the record with the lucid dream is all REM sleep, as you can see by the rapid eye movements, low muscle tone, and appropriate brain waves. The first signal, given at number one, is when the subject realized he was dreaming. He made the correct signal. The next thing that happened was that he flew around and did other things he enjoys doing in his lucid dreams until about a minute and a half later, when it seemed to him that he had awakened. So, he made the appropriate signal to indicate an awakening. We have subjects signal not only when they become lucid, but also when their lucid dreams end and they think they have awakened. This is because of cases like this; when you look at the record, you see that both before and after his wake signal he is still in REM sleep. He is only dreaming that he is awake; he’s had a “false awakening.” He dreams on for a while and then odd things begin to happen. At one point the technician in the dream is taking off the subject’s electrodes and treating him impolitely, and he realizes that this doesn’t happen at Stanford, so he must still be dreaming. Then he makes another signal, marked in Figure 1 by number three, which means that he knows that he is dreaming again. However, he realized that he didn’t do it quite right, so he repeated it properly. You see at number three he has made actually six eye movements, rather than the agreed upon four. He dreams on and at the end he truly wakes up.
We rely on both the physiological and psychological records together to determine the subject’s state of consciousness. At the end of the dream, he actually is awake, and we say he’s awake because we see muscle tone and movement artifact, so we know he is moving around. Here, at the false awakening, we say he’s still in REM sleep because the EEG has not changed. It’s hard to see at this scale, but it is still mainly delta waves, with theta and a little alpha here and there. The EMG also didn’t change, proving that he’s still in the dream state there. It’s only because he’s given the waking signal while still dreaming that we could conclude without even seeing the report that, in all likelihood, he had just had a false awakening. True, sometimes people will give the wrong signal, so that a subject would give what lookslike a false awakening signal and then in the report say, “So, I signalled that I knew I was dreaming.” This would be what the subject does for signals, making a mistake about it and not noticing, or else saying, “And I knew I didn’t do it right, but you know, I hope it worked.” People vary in how carefully they do this.
The important thing about this subject making six eye movements, then realizing that that was not right and repeating the signal correctly is that it shows he is monitoring his actions critically. He is noticing, “I’m supposed to do this, but I did not do it correctly.” Therefore, he is critically “awake.” This is the variety of lucid dreams we have been studying, ones in which people are explicitly conscious that they are dreaming; there is not any doubt. We don’t have to ask them afterwards, “Did you know if you were dreaming?” The subjects know not merely that they are dreaming, but that they are in the sleep lab and that they’re there for a purpose—in order to signal the beginning of the lucid dream, and then carry out whatever other experiments have been planned for the dream state. This is different from some other levels of lucid dreaming that exist for people who don’t attain fully lucidity, but who may have some sense of what it’s like to know they are dreaming. We’re studying a very specific type of lucid dream.
Now we will take a look at how we have been examining the physiology of lucid dreaming. To begin there are variations in how much eye movement activity occurs in different parts of the dream. In the first part of the dream shown in Figure 1 there is not much eye movement activity. Right before the lucid dream there is more. What we have done is take 76 lucid dreams, from 13 subjects, of this variety, all unambiguously signalled so that we were certain where lucidity began. Beginning from these signals, we divided up the entire REM periods into 30-second periods before and after the onset of lucidity. We looked at respiration rate, finger pulse amplitude, and eye movement density in the periods before and after lucidity, and our results are displayed in Figure 2. These four plots are all the same. We are looking at standard scores, so the zeroes in all these cases are the mean values for the entire REM period. For example, taking REM density, we counted how many eye movements occurred in each 30 second period for the whole REM period. For each subject we converted these counts to standard (Z) scores. Then we averaged these across subjects. The number of dreams contributed by each subject varied from 1 to 25. Beverly contributed 25 lucid dreams, but we averaged all hers together so she contributed one Z-score to the averages that you see here. Thus, for eye movement density we have 13 subjects each contributing an equal amount. You see that in the 30 seconds before the lucid dream begins there is a significant elevation of eye movement activity, and also of respiration rate and frequency of skin potential responses. There’s a trend toward an increase in the heart rate, but it doesn’t increase significantly until later in the lucid dream. The stars mean that the elevation is statistically significant.
You can also see that once the lucid dream has begun, the physiological activation continues, and in some cases increases. So, we can see quite clearly that lucid dreams are more activated than normal REM on the average. There is an extra increase of activation at the initiation, the point at which the subject realizes he or she is dreaming, that you can see especially in the skin potential responses, which are very frequent at this point. In fact, the occurrence of skin potential responses in REM is almost an easy way to tell when a lucid dream starts, because skin potential responses in REM sleep are fairly uncommon, yet when they occur they are very frequently associated with lucid dreams.
Another interesting thing to note about these measures I’ve presented here is that they are all measures of sympathetic activation. Since all of these factors are increasing at the onset of lucidity, clearly what is happening is that lucid dreams are occurring in one of the two main varieties of REM sleep: the one called “phasic REM.” The general background state is called “tonic REM,” upon which occasionally issuperimposed phasic activation which may be present in varying degrees. Lucid dreams tend to occur in association with the highest degree of phasic activation. Phasic activation is responsible, among other things, for the active suppression of sensory input. I will return to this topic in the summary, but let us now turn to another analysis.
We found that the dream reports fell into two categories. People either said that they had just awakened from a lucid dream with no awakening before, or they mention having been briefly awake before entering the lucid dream. That is, they were either continuously in the dream state, or else there was a mention of an awakening. When we looked at the physiological records of these dreams, we found that 100 percent of the wake (W) types had at least momentary awakenings somewhere in the two minutes before; whereas something like 10 percent of the others did. So it seems quite clear that some lucid dreams are initiated from awakenings during REM; we call these wake-initiated lucid dreams (WILDs). They were the minority of our cases; only 25 percent were of this type. Some subjects, who contributed only one or two lucid dreams didn’t have any WILDs. But it is plain that at least two types of lucid dream occur, and this fits quite well with the experiential literature. We call the other type of lucid dream DILDs, for dream-initiated lucid dreams.
We have gathered some interesting information on how these lucid dreams are initiated. What we did is measure the time at which lucid dreams occurred from the beginning of the REM periods. REM periods last from 1 or 2 minutes to 45 minutes or an hour, depending on the time of night. Then we plotted the distribution of the lucid dreams within REM periods. Since our time is limited, we’ll just consider the combined lucid dream sample (LaBerge, 1985). It basically has two factors. One, it is a little flat at the beginning and then it decreases with time—this distribution is accounted for mainly by the survival function of REM periods. The fact is that there are many more REM periods that are at least 2 minutes in length than there are ones of at least 20 minutes in length. Consequently, you would expect to find more lucid dreams occurring at 2 minutes in length than at 20 minutes in length, other factors being equal. This is a gradually monotonically decreasing function which just falls off, but there are some exceptions, especially with the WILDs. At the beginning with the shorter REM periods, there are less cases than would be expected by the survivor function. The remainder of the variance can be accounted for by adding one other factor, such as eye movement density. REM density, if plotted across a REM period, starts out very low in the beginning. In the first two minutes of REM the eye-movement density and all the other physiological parameters are about three or four standard deviations below the mean value for the whole REM period. This means that the brain is not fully activated yet; it takes more time. This again fits with the activation picture that we saw in Figure 2, which showed that one only has lucid dreams if the brain is sufficiently activated. For that reason, lucidity tends not to happen in the first few minutes of a REM period.
There is one last analysis which I want to discuss. We also have looked at the distribution of lucid dreams across REM periods (LaBerge, Levitan & Dement, 1986). That is, how many lucid dreams happened in REM period one, two, three, and so on. Again, most of the variance is covered by two factors. One is simply the amount of total REM time available in each REM period. If you count up how many total minutes of REM period Number One there were in one night and how many total minutes of REM period Number Two, and so on, you will find that you can account for a lot of the distribution by the amount of REM time. This is similar to the preceding results in that there is roughly a constant probability of having lucid dreams. Given the appropriate mental set where there is an opportunity for lucidity it will happen. However, there is one other factor which is almost as important: the REM period effect. In later REM periods of the night lucid dreams are much more likely to happen. What wedetermined was the relative proportion of lucid dreams in each REM period segment. The number of lucid dreams per minute in REM period Number 1, 2, 3, 4 is a linearly increasing number, so that in REM period Number 3 there is a higher rate than in 2, and so on. It is a directly increasing result. What should we make of this?
There is a phenomena that has been described by David Cohen especially, called the hypothesis of Gradually Increasing Left Dominance or GILD. The reason this hypothesis seems to fit with these findings is that, in earlier REM periods of the night, the right hemisphere is involved in REM sleep, whereas as the night goes on you see less of a full right hemisphere type of activation and more mixtures with the emergence of left hemisphere activity. Now, in the lucid dream state it is clear that you’ve got to have an active left hemisphere, because that’s the one needed to say, “This is a dream.” That is the speaking hemisphere, and the more analytical hemisphere. Therefore, I think that GILD could easily account for the relative proportion of lucid dreams being greater in later REM periods. This is also fits with the fact that many people have reported, “My lucid dreams typically happen after being in bed for eight or nine hours or late into the night.”
To summarize what is indicated by our findings, although that the dream is a paradoxically activated state, the lucid dream is a very activated state. But the dreamer doesn’t wake up due to this activation. I think that’s part of the clue to why lucidity typically happens in REM sleep, and apparently more rarely under other circumstances as yet undetermined, which Joe will mention later, in non-REM sleep. In REM sleep active processes are suppressing awakening. The more these processes are turned on, the less likely it is that you will wake up. So a positive feedback loop is activated. Perhaps because you’re so involved in the dream and constructing such a vivid reality there, it becomes still harder for sensory information to come in due to the fact that in order to perceive something you have to put it in context. If the context you have is in a dream, then this context does not include the external environment. What we see then is that physiological activation seems to be the main factor in determining the onset of lucid dreams. Another factor, obviously, is mental set, because if you haven’t got the mental set to do this it’s not going to happen. We could have plotted a thousand records from people who didn’t have lucid dreams, and they would have shown similar peaks and valleys. In their peak activation periods they never had lucid dreams, because they didn’t have the mental set.
Obviously, there are many things we’re going to have to work out in the future, but so far the picture is quite straightforward in showing that activation is tremendously important in determining when lucid dreams happen.

###### References

LaBerge, S. (1985). The temporal distribution of lucid dreams, Sleep Research, 14, 113.

LaBerge, S., Levitan, L. & Dement, W.C. (1986). Lucid dreaming: Physiological correlates of consciousness during REM sleep. Journal of Mind and Behavior, 7, 251–258.

##### III.B.2 H-Reflex in Lucid Dreams

###### ANDREW BRYLOWSKI

University of Texas Medical School at Houston

When I started medical school, I wanted to continue doing psychophysiological research into consciousness during REM sleep, but many of my mentors suggested that by definition this was impossible. I was going to have to come up with some sort of unequivocal proof that the phenomenon I was talking about was indeed REM sleep and not a micro-awakening. After collaborating with Stephen LaBerge, and others, and reviewing the literature, we decided that the best thing to do would be to continuously monitor H-reflex amplitude throughout the night, its suppression being a unique criterion of REM sleep.
To induce the H-reflex, we stimulated the posterior tibial nerve, which is a nerve behind your knee, every 5 seconds to produce a contraction of the soleus muscle, which was then recorded as a pen detection on the polygraph record. What the literature had documented was that the H-reflex amplitude was variably present in all states of non-REM sleep and wakefulness, but during REM sleep, when all your muscle tension is gone, and when you are in effect paralyzed and not receiving any sensory input from the external environment, this H-reflex is suppressed. By documenting H-reflex suppression during lucid dreaming, we added further support to the growing body of knowledge that the phenomenon is indeed a REM sleep occurrence and not a micro-awakening.
In Figure 1, the left side of the diagram is REM sleep with an eye movement signal indicating that I’m lucid, and the right side of the diagram is awake with eyes closed and an eye movement signal which we agreed means that I perceive myself to be awake. The top nine lines are brain wave activity, followed by three lines for eye movements, a line each for anger pulse, submental muscle tension, heart rate and H-reflex, and two lines for respiration.
The dream behind this polygraph record was one in which I was not lucid. I was walking around minding my own business when all of a sudden Jimmy Stewart started to talk with me. I immediately realized I was dreaming, since Jimmy Stewart normally doesn’t come and talk with me. I decided to signal left-right, left-right, up-down, up-down, left-right, left-right. I awakened shortly thereafter and made a left-right, left-right, left-right, left-right signal, which means that I perceive myself to be awake.
Figure 2 shows that the H-reflex is significantly more suppressed during lucid REM sleep than during any other stage of sleep or wakefulness. These statistics were generated by scoring each 5-second epoch within each REM period as awake, Stage 1, Stage 2, REM or lucid REM sleep. The H-reflex amplitude was measured after each 5-second epoch and 95% confidence limits were established. As you can see, the H-reflex is significantly more suppressed during lucid REM sleep than during any other stage. This would _t with a hypothesis that increasing brain activation during REM sleep leads to further suppression of reflex activity.
In the future, I hope to further investigate the physiology of lucid dreaming in order to better understandhow the teaching of this skill to various patient populations may be useful as an adjunct to current treatment plans.

##### III.B.3 EEG Activity During Lucid Dreaming

###### ROBERT D. OGILVIE, KEVIN P. VIEIRA and ROBERT J. SMALL

Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada

We have been interested in the electrophysiological correlates of lucid dreaming (LD) since early work in this laboratory suggested a relationship between lucidity and alpha activity (Ogilvie, Hunt, Sawicki & McGowan, 1978; Ogilvie, Hunt, Tyson, Lucescu & Jeakins, 1982; Tyson, Ogilvie, & Hunt, 1984). Until now, this alpha-lucidity hypothesis had not been tested in our lab on high frequency lucid dreamers who signal while in the REM stage of sleep, and LaBerge (1980; 1981) had not observed any changes in alpha in signalled episodes of lucidity.
The present report describes computer analyses of EEG activity obtained during eight laboratory nights from a frequent lucid dreamer (RJS). In addition to standard polysomnographic measures, CCTV monitoring with two cameras and a screen splitter permitted simultaneous display and videotaping of the subject’s face and concurrent polygraphic activity. This was particularly useful during REM, since RJS had trained himself to sleep on his back and to try to signal from that position.
In the month prior to the lab nights, RJS spent over an hour per day meditating. He also used LaBerge’s lucidity induction or cognitive self-instruction techniques and reported LD rates in excess of one per night. He practiced signalling (using three blinks/rapid vertical eye movements) and thought he had successfully signalled several LDs while at home.
In the lab, he was instructed to try to enter the lucid state whenever possible and to signal lucidity when the state was attained. He was told that he would be awakened by the experimenter (KPV) and asked for a mentation report:

1. When KPV saw LD signalling, presumably during REM sleep;

2. During REM without signalling; or

3. From non-REM (Stage 2) sleep.

While in the lab, five episodes of signalled lucid dreaming were recorded, each confirmed by experimental arousal and a taped mentation report. In addition, there were eight Stage 2 control arousals, three nonlucid REM arousals, and one prelucid report following a REM awakening.
The signalled LD incidents were quite interesting; in one particularly clear instance, videotaped records show the eye movement signals concurrent with the REM EEG and other polygraphic evidence of sleep. Several seconds later, the experimental arousal and interview could be observed.
Four-minute samples of EEG data were obtained as follows:

1. Immediately prior to the signalled LD arousal;

2. Prior to Stage 2 arousals; and

3. Sampled from REM without signalling and not followed by an arousal.

The samples were digitized, subjected to FFT analysis, and analyses of variance were computed. Delta, theta, alpha, and spindle frequencies were examined for power and percent power. Principle comparisons were between LD and Stage 2 arousals and between LD arousals and REM samples devoid of signalling. Each of the four one-minute samples of EEG was studied in sequence. (An insufficient number of nonlucid REM arousals prevented use of that condition as another comparison.)
In the REM versus LD REM analyses, the absence of a main effect suggests that within this one individual, no remarkable EEG changes take place within REM to accompany the entry into lucidity. Only the interaction between REM condition and time was significant. There, variable amounts of alpha in the minutes before LD arousal contrasted with decreasing alpha levels in the undisturbed REM data. There were differences between LD and Stage 2 EEG in theta percent (higher theta during LD REM), though alpha percentages were surprisingly similar, differing only in the interaction between time and arousal state.
In sum, there were no important differences observed in the EEG activity of our LD signaller when LD REM and undisrupted, presumably nonlucid, REM samples were compared. As usual, there weren’t as many samples (or subjects) as one would like to employ for such comparisons, but these data do not support predictions from our earlier work that alpha levels could be expected to change during lucid dreams. From this limited sample, it seems that the increases in alpha which reach their highest levels during prelucid dreams (Tyson, et al., 1984) do not change in any predictable way during the lucid episode itself. Relating what is known about variations in alpha levels during wakefulness to those observed during REM sleep might prove interesting. During complex mental activity and high levels of arousal, EEG frequency is at its highest; beta frequencies predominate and alpha levels are relatively low. EEG recordings during relaxed wakefulness show the highest levels of alpha, and Rechtschaffen and Kales (1968) define Stage 1 sleep as beginning when alpha levels fall below 50 percent. Perhaps the lucid dreamer moves in the opposite direction along the arousal continuum as s/he ascends phenomenologically from normal, uncritical dreaming, through (in some instances) a prelucid period where the reality of the dream experience is questioned, to a state wherein full lucidity (and signalling) is attained. Perhaps the electrophysiological correlates of the ascent along the consciousness continuum may begin with relatively low levels of alpha (typical REM dreaming), move to higher alpha levels (prelucid dreaming), and end with moderate alpha levels (lucid dreaming), while still in the REM state. More data are needed to refine this viewpoint.

References

LaBerge, S. (1980). Lucid dreaming as a learnable skill: A case study. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 9, 1039–1042. 6

LaBerge, S. (1981). Lucid dreaming: Directing the act as it happens. Psychology Today, 15, 48–57.

Ogilvie, R., Hunt, H., Sawicki, C. & McGowan, K. (1978). Searching for lucid dreams. (Abstract). Sleep Research, 7, 165.

Ogilvie, R.D., Hunt, H.T., Tyson, P.D., Lucescu, M.L., & Jeakins, D.B. (1982). Lucid dreaming and alpha activity: A preliminary report. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 55, 795–808.

Rechtschaffen, A. & Kales, A. (Eds.) (1968). A manual of standardized terminology, techniques and scoring system for sleep stages of human subjects. Washington, DC: Public Health Services, U. S. Government Printing Office.

Tyson, P.D., Ogilvie, R.D. & Hunt, H.T. (1984). Lucid, prelucid, and nonlucid dreams related to the amount of EEG alpha activity during REM sleep. Psychophysiology, 21, 442–451.

##### III.B.4 Neurophysiological Order in the REM Sleep of Participants of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Program

###### JAN M.R. MEIRSMAN

Lelystad, The Netherlands

Editor’s Note: Page-count constraints and the overall nature of this issue led us to decide, with regret, that we could only republish an abstract of this meticulously documented pilot study. Readers who want detailed information including quantitative and qualitative results should contact the editor to obtain a copy of Lucidity Letter, 9(2).

Previous research has revealed that, in the course of ontogenesis, the randomly occurring, isolated, low frequency Rapid Eye Movements (REMs) of the undifferentiated sleep of the premature are gradually ordered in groups of high-frequency REMs, characteristic of mature REM sleep (Petre-Quadens, 1967; 1969; 1978; Petre-Quadens & De Lee, 1974; Petre-Quadens, De Lee & Remy, 1971). This observation has led to the hypothesis that there exist two functionally different types of REMs in REM sleep: the high frequency (HF) REMs with an interval of less than one second, reflecting the “maturity” or “order” of brain functioning; and the low frequency (LF) REMs with an interval of more than one second, reflecting “random noise” in the brain. Subsequent research has supported this hypothesis.
TM and TM-Sidhi techniques, when practised 20–40 minutes twice a day, result in improved scores on tests of cognitive and affective functioning. Improvements took place regardless of the age of the subjects, even on variables like “fluid intelligence” and “field independence,” which normally do not improve after the age of 17 (Aron, Orme-Johnson & Brubaker, 1981; Dillbeck, Assimakis, Raimondi, Orme-Johnson & Rowe, 1986).
In view of these findings, it seemed appropriate to test the above described hypothesis—that the brain during REM sleep carries out information-ordering processes which are reflected in the neurophysiological patterns of the REM sleep—with subjects who are practising the TM and TM-Sidhi programs. This has been done with the following REM sleep parameters: the ratio of the HF-REMs (I < 1 sec) to the LF-REMs (I > 2 sec) (as a measure for the order-creating capacity of the brain); the density of the HF-REMs (as a measure for the intensity of the information-ordering process); the density of the LF-REMs (as a measure for the intensity of the cerebral “noise” which accompanies the information-ordering process to a certain extent); the REM density, or density of all REMs regardless of their frequency (as a measure for the intensity of the stimulation of the brain); the total number of HF-REMs (as a measure for the absolute amount of ordered information over the total REM sleep time); the total number of LF-REMs (as a measure for the absolute amount of cerebral “noise” over the totalREM sleep time); the REM sleep time (as a measure for the total efficiency of REM sleep); and the REM sleep percentage (as a measure for the total efficiency of REM sleep, in relation to total sleep).

Methods

Subjects

Six male TM-Sidhi practitioners, aged between 31 and 39, with different educational backgrounds, served as experimental subjects (Table 1). They had been practising TM for an average period of 139 months (range, 94–199 months), and the advanced TM-Sidhi program for an average period of 87 months (range, 76–96 months). All but the youngest were teachers of the TM technique. The author was one of the experimental subjects. The experimental group was part of a group of 230 male TM-Sidhi practitioners, predominantly Europeans, who resided at the TM academy in Vlodrop (Limburg, The Netherlands). There, they worked full-time and, in addition, practised an extensive TM-Sidhi program collectively. Four of the six experimental subjects reported clear experiences of the TM-Sidhis and of “witnessing” their night’s sleep, and two reported less clear experiences (Table 1).
Six male subjects who did not practise any form of meditation, yoga, or similar technique for holistic development, served as control subjects. Their ages ranged between 33 and 38, and they all had had an academic education (Table 1).
All subjects were in good health. On the day preceding the measurement, none experienced intense emotions or physical discomforts, none used medicine, had alcoholic drinks, or took any additional rest in the form of sleep.

Procedure and Apparatus

Each of the subjects was measured in his own bedroom for two consecutive nights, by means of an ambulant four-channel recorder, the Medilog 4–24 of the Oxford Medical Systems. Starting two days before the measurement, the subject filled out some diary forms which were examined every day by the person who took the measurement. Measurement of the experimental group was done by the author; measurement of the control group and of the author serving as experimental subject was done by a medical student of the University of Limburg (The Netherlands). During the two months’ measuring period, the experimental and control subjects were measured alternately as much as possible. Although the subjects had been measured in their own environment, a first night effect could be noticed and therefore only the second night was fully analyzed.

Discussion

REM Ratio and the Order-Creating Capacity of the Brain: The HF-REMs/LF-REMs ratio for total REM sleep was greater in the group of TM-Sidhi practitioners in comparison with the control group, giving further support to the concept of the HF-REMs/LF-REMs ratio as an index of negative entropy in the brain. In the present study, the ratio of REMs in the group of TM-Sidhi practitioners is greater because of a greater density of the HF-REMs, which supports the concept that the development of these HF-REMs in REM sleep is indeed the result of a maturation process, in particular of the frontal cortex.

Density of HF-REMs and Clarity of Mind: A greater density of REMs during REM sleep has been found to correlate with a greater amount of information to which the subjects are exposed. Perhaps one would therefore expect in the group of TM-Sidhi practitioners of the present study a smaller REM density inREM sleep, because of the daily hours of quiet meditation practice. The fact that, on the contrary, a greater density of REMs—and in particular of HF-REMs—is found in the TM-Sidhi practitioners agrees with the interpretation that it is primarily the alertness or clarity of mind that makes one receptive to stimuli and capable of integrating this information.

REM Ratio and Independency of the Cerebral Integrating Capacity: Nevertheless, the density of REMs during REM sleep—interpreted as a measure for the stimulation of the brain—seems to remain dependent on the amount of information to which the subject is exposed. This can be deduced in the present study from the comparison of the experimental subject A with the experimental subject F. During the day preceding the analyzed night, the experimental subject A had been exposed to an unusually large amount of sensory information, whereas the experimental subject F had stayed in his routine of quiet, intellectual work. Consequently, the first showed an extremely high REM density during the REM sleep, while the latter scored the lowest (total) REM density of the whole experimental group. The difference between the two subjects was even more pronounced with regard to the total amount of HF-REMs and total amount of LF-REMs in the REM sleep. However, when the HF-REMs are placed in relation to the LF-REMs to express the cerebral integration of information, then this difference disappears and the score of the REM ratio of both these subjects attain the highest value in the study. This agrees with their strong subjective experience of the TM-Sidhis and of the maintenance of pure consciousness during their sleep (Table 1). Previous research has found enhanced information processing (ideational fluency) and EEG coherence in those with clear experiences of pure consciousness and of the TM-Sidhi techniques (Orme-Johnson & Haynes, 1981). It also illustrates the independency of this cerebral integrating capacity parameter with regard to the amount of information to which the subject is exposed.
About 430 research studies on TM and TM-Sidhi practitioners have found physiological, psychological, or sociological data which could be interpreted in terms of greater health and maturity (For examples and summaries, see Orme-Johnson & Farrow, 1977; Wallace, Orme-Johnson & Dillbeck, 1989).

EEG Alpha Activity and Intelligence or Maturity: The subjects with a greater REM ratio have an EEG alpha activity which is more abundant and of a greater amplitude and lower frequency. This finding, again, is in accordance with the interpretation of the REM ratio as a measure for intelligence and maturity.
The TM-Sidhi group, which has the greater REM ratio, also shows a sleep spindle activity which is more abundant and displays a higher amplitude and a lower frequency. This finding—when taken together with the greater synchronization and coherence in the electrocorticogram and the improved cognitive and affective functioning in TM and TM-Sidhi practitioners—agrees with the hypothesis that both sleep spindles and REM ratio reflect the cerebral assimilation of information during sleep.

REMs and Sleep Spindles and Excitation and Inhibition: It was suggested (Petre-Quadens, 1969) that the REM activity as an excitation process is kept in balance by an equivalent spindle activity which could be considered as an inhibition process, and that therefore both activities never take place at the same time. The sleep spindles, observed during the REM bursts of REM sleep in the present study, indeed never completely coincided with the individual REMs.

Alpha Transition Stage and Transcendence: Immediately before and after sleep in all experimental subjects (except subject C) and in the control subject B, and immediately before and after each of the five sleep phases during the night in the Experimental subject B, a kind of prolonged transition stagebetween normal waking and sleeping occurred which, with its almost uninterrupted, high amplitude alpha activity and rhythmical eye movements, showed much similarity with Transcendental Meditation. This agrees with the reports of the experimental subjects in question that the degree to which the meditative state of restful alertness (here, integrated with waking) is experienced at the beginning of the sleep determines how “pleasingly” and “refreshingly” the sleep proceeds. It is also reminiscent of the vision of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1967) that Transcendental Meditation eventually develops in its practitioners a fourth major state of consciousness, termed “transcendental” or “pure” consciousness, which can be clearly experienced either in its pure form during the short transition stages between waking, dreaming and sleeping or during the states of waking, dreaming and sleeping.

Conclusion

To conclude, the fact that all the group results of the present study, without any exception, show coherently, according to the definitions and findings of previous sleep research, a greater neurophysiological order in the TM-Sidhi group than in the control group, adds further support to the main hypothesis that the HF-REMs/LF-REMs ratio is a measure of the cerebral capacity to structure “order” out of “noise.” The fact that the experimental values on this REM ratio were far higher than the values reported in the literature could be interpreted as indicating the onset of a new dimension of consciousness: a continuum of restful alertness, serving as a back-ground of order, extending to the night’s sleep. It would, therefore, deserve further investigation. One could use larger samples of subjects, extend the measurement to four consecutive nights, and score the REMs automatically (provided the necessary software is available). Perhaps one could also use subjects as their own controls before and after their start with the TM and TM-Sidhi programs, to measure more directly the role of this practice with respect to order or intelligence. If one places the EEG electrodes in a strictly standardized manner, and measures with a low-noise apparatus, one could simultaneously analyze the EEG signals for coherence or long-range spatial order in the brain.

###### Selected References

Aron, A., Orme-Johnson, D. & Brubaker, P. (1981). The Transcendental Meditation program in the college curriculum: A 4–year longitudinal study of effects on cognitive and affective functioning. College Student Journal, 15(2), 140–146.

Dillbeck, M.C., Assimakis, P.D., Raimondi, D., Orme-Johnson, D.W., & Rowe, R. (1986). Longitudinal effects of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program on cognitive ability and cognitive style. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 62, 731–738.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. (1967). The science of being and art of living. Fairfield, Iowa: MIU Press.

Petre-Quadens, O. (1967). Ontogenesis of paradoxical sleep in the human newborn. Journal of Neurological Science, 4, 153–157.

Petre-Quadens, O. (1969). Contribution ŕ l’étude de la phase dite paradoxale du sommeil. Acta Neurol. Belg., 69, 769–898.

Petre-Quadens, O. (1978). Logic and ontogenesis of some sleep patterns. Totus Homo, 10(8), 15–19, 60–72.

Petre-Quadens, O. & De Lee, C. (1974). Eye movement frequencies and related paradoxical sleep cycles: Developmental changes. Chronobiologia, 1, 348–355.

Petre-Quadens, O., De Lee, C. & Remy, M. (1971). Eye movement density during sleep and brain maturation. Brain Res., 26, 49–56.

### Section C: Predisposing Factors and Individual Differences

##### III.C.1 An Estimate of Lucid Dreaming Incidence

###### JAYNE GACKENBACH

Athabasca University and University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Prevalence (how many people have ever had at least one lucid dream) and frequency (how often an individual experiences these dreams) are two ways of conceptualizing lucid dreaming incidence. Seven surveys have attempted to ascertain the prevalence of lucid dreaming in both student (Palmer, 1979; LaBerge, 1985; Gackenbach, Rokes, Sachau & Snyder, 1984) and adult (Palmer, 1979; Kohr, 1980; Blackmore, 1984; Gackenbach, 1978; Gackenbach, Curren, LaBerge, Davidson & Maxwell, 1983) samples. Among the latter estimates of having had at least one lucid dream range from 100% (Gackenbach et al., 1983) to 47% (Blackmore, 1984). Both sample characteristic considerations and understanding of the concept clarify the picture. Kohr (1980), Gackenbach (1978) and Gackenbach et al. (1983) were all dealing with highly motivated adult samples, that is, people who have an unusually high interest in dreaming and/or lucid dreaming. Thus their estimates tend to run high (Kohr, 70%; Gackenbach, 76%; Gackenbach et al., 100%). In the Palmer (1979) and Blackmore (1984) surveys, adults were randomly chosen from the telephone directory in the case of the former and from the electoral register in the case of the latter. Consequently, their estimates are considerably more conservative: Palmer, 55% and Blackmore, 47%. However, there is no indication that Palmer and Blackmore attempted to verify that their respondents understood the concept.
LaBerge (1985) and Gackenbach, Heilman, Boyt and LaBerge (1985) have pointed out that when subjects are asked to supply a lucid dream, incidence rates drop dramatically due to the subjects’ confusion over the definition of dream lucidity. For instance, LaBerge reported a drop in incidence of subjects reporting at least one lucid dream during their lifetime from 85% to 77% while Gackenbach et al. (1984) lost 344 of 707 subjects because their dream transcripts were judged to be either clearly not a lucid dream, questionably lucid, or partially lucid.
As with adults, prevalence estimates for students ranges from 85% (LaBerge, 1985) to 57.5%(Gackenbach et al., 1984). In a randomly chosen sample Palmer (1979) reported 71.5 % prevalence but did not verify understanding, while LaBerge (1985) found a 77% prevalence with verification but his sample was not random (i.e., students enrolled in a sleep and dreams class). Gackenbach et al’s (1984) estimate of prevalence, 57.5%, in a student sample was chosen randomly from Introductory Psychology classes. They verified that potential research participants understood the concept by collecting lucid dream transcripts and having them evaluated by independent judges.
Frequency, as another incidence indicate, has been conceptualized in two ways: self-reported and percentage of lucid dreams from collected dream diaries compiled either in the laboratory or at home. Only self-report and at home dream diary estimates are reported herein. As with prevalence, considerations of sample characteristics and verification of understanding impact estimates of self-reported frequency. Hearne’s (1978; 1983) two samples were all lucid dreamers, so relative individual frequency in a normal population cannot be estimated from his data.
Estimates of experiencing dream lucidity more than once per month range from 13.5% (Gackenbach et al., 1984) to 28.5% (Palmer, 1979). One or more per lifetime (but less than once per month) estimates range from 36.55% (Gackenbach et al., 1984) to 60% (Gackenbach, 1978). When broken down by type of sample, high-interest dream-recalling adults were tapped by Gackenbach (1978; once per month = 16%; once per lifetime = 60%) and Kohr (1980; once per month = 21%; once per lifetime = 49%), while Palmer (1979) randomly sampled adults and found 13.5% reported such dreams once per month, while another 41% said that they had them rarely. Understandably the Kohr and Gackenbach figures are higher than the Palmer estimates with the latter being more accurate. However, Palmer did not verify understanding so his figures may also be inflated.
Of the three student samples upon which this work has been reported, two verified understanding (Gackenbach et al., 1985; LaBerge, 1985) and two were randomly selected (Gackenbach et al., 1985; Palmer, 1979), but only one filled both criteria (Gackenbach et al., 1985). They report that 20.75% of their sample reported lucid dreaming once or more per month while 36.55% reported it more than once in a lifetime but less than monthly.
Two studies considered frequency by counting lucid dreams in a dream log. In a high interest adult sample with control for understanding, Gackenbach, Curren, LaBerge, Davidson, and Maxwell (1983) found a frequency of 13% lucid dreams in their dream logs kept for seven to ten days or an average of one in eight days. The exact same percentage was reported by Gackenbach, Curren and Cutler (1983) in a more normative sample, i.e., college students, also controlled for understanding. They note, “Of the 1601 dreams recorded by the 320 students over a 16-week period of once-weekly recordings, 349 were lucid and 1252 were vivid. However, if the dreamer did not provide a verifiable lucid dream transcript either early or late in the semester, the lucid dreams they experienced were deleted. Consequently, 211 lucid dreams remained” (p. 7).
In conclusion, the best estimate of prevalence is that about 58% of the population have experienced a lucid dream at least once in their lifetime while about 21% report it with some frequency (one or more per month). Additionally, 13% of dreams recalled on the morning after and recorded in dream diaries are likely to be lucid.

###### References

Blackmore, S.J. (1984). A postal survey of OBEs and other experiences. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 52, 225–244.

Gackenbach, J.I. (1978). A personality and cognitive style analysis of lucid dreaming. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Virginia Commonwealth University.

Gackenbach, J.I., Curren, R., & Cutler, G. (1983). Pre-sleep determinants and post-sleep results of lucid versus vivid dreams. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Mental Imagery, Vancouver, June.

Gackenbach, J.I., Curren, R., LaBerge, S., Davidson, D. & Maxwell, P. (1983). Intelligence, creativity, and personality differences between individuals who vary in self-reported lucid dreaming frequency. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Mental Imagery, Vancouver, June.

Gackenbach, J.I., Heilman, N., Boyt, S. & LaBerge, S. (1985). The relationship between field independence and lucid dreaming ability. Journal of Mental Imagery, 2(1), 9–20.

Gackenbach, J.I., Rokes, L., Sachau, D. & Snyder, T.J. (1984). Relationship of the lucid dreaming ability to vestibular sensitivity as measured by caloric nystagmus. Manuscript under editorial consideration.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1978). Lucid dreams: An electrophysiological and psychological study. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Liverpool.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1983). Features of lucid dreams: Questionnaire data and content analyses (1). Journal of Lucid Dream Research, 1(1), 3–20.

Kohr, R.L. (1980). A survey of psi experiences among members of a special population. The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 74, 295–411.

LaBerge, S. (1985). Lucid dreaming: The power of being awake and aware in your dreams. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Palmer, J. (1974). A community mail survey of psychic experiences. Research in Parapsychology, 3, 130- 133.

##### III.C.2 Sex Differences in Lucid Dreaming Self-Reported Frequency: A Second Look

###### JAYNE GACKENBACH

Athabasca University and University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

In eariler issues of Lucidity Letter it was reported that females experience more lucid dreams than males ( Volume 1, Numbers 1 & 2). Dream recall was not controlled in any of these studies. One-way analyses of covariance on various lucid dreaming frequency esimates with dream recall as the covariate for four different samples resulted in no sex differnces. Table 1 lists the specifics to these findings. It should be noted that in all four samples care was taken to insure that subjects understood the concept of dream lucidity by collecting a sample lucid dream and requiing the inclusion of a recognition phase( i.e. “then I realized I was dreaming”) in the transcript before a subject was included in subsequent data analyses.

##### III.C.3 Lucid Dreams and Viewpoints in Imagery: Two Studies

###### SUSAN BLACKMORE

University of Bristol, Great Britain

There is much evidence that the same people tend to report both lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences (OBEs) (Irwin & Blackmore, 1988), but there is no general accepted explanation for this association. One way of exploring this further is to see whether the same cognitive skills are associated with the two experiences. Previous studies have shown the vividness of imagery and control of imagery are not associated with lucid dreaming (Blackmore, 1982; Hearne, 1978), while recent studies show some association between having OBEs and certain visuospatial skills (Cook & Irwin, 1983).
In three recent studies I explored the relationship between having OBEs and the use of viewpoints in imagery and memory (Blackmore, 1983; 1985). A theory of OBEs (Blackmore, 1984) predicted that OBErs should be more likely to use an “observer” perspective in recall and dreams and to be able to switch easily from one viewpoint to another in imagery. I also predicted that, if the observer viewpoint is used as an escape from unpleasant situations, bad dreams should more often be recalled in observer perspective than good dreams.
Several of the predictions were confirmed. As expected, unpleasant dreams were more often recalled in observer perspective. It was found that OBErs do not more often use an observer viewpoint in recall of real life situations, but they do more often use it in dream recall. Also OBErs reported having more vivid imagery from different viewpoints and were consistently better at switching from one viewpoint to another in imagery tasks. This was especially so for the viewpoint above the head, which is common in OBEs.
It is of interest to know whether the same differences would appear for those who have lucid dreams. Therefore, the results of the second two studies were compared for those who did and did not have lucid dreams.

Experiment 1: Method

Subjects. There were 135 subjects, tested in four groups. The majority, 68%, were female with ages ranging from 17 to 94 (mean = 43.1 years).

Procedure. The subjects were asked to imagine the room in which they were sitting (various classrooms and libraries) from four to five different locations. They then had to rate how clear and vivid their image of the room was using a scale from 1 (no image) to 7 (a perfectly clear and detailed image). The locations were at eye level in the doorway, by the ceiling above their own head, by the ceiling above someone else’s head, by their feet and at their own eye level. The last of these was used for only 63 of the subjects.
The subjects were also asked where they normally perceive their “self” or “center of awareness” to beand were asked to try to switch their viewpoint or center of awareness form its normal position to above their head and back, and from their normal position to their feet. They were asked to rate how easily they could do this on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (extremely easily). It was predicted that it would be much easier to switch to a position above the head than to the feet.
Finally they were asked whether at any time during the exercises they either saw their own body from the outside, or seemed to have another body at their imagined location. They were asked whether they had ever had a lucid dream or an out-of-body experience. The lucid dream question was worded as follows: “Have you ever had a dream in which you knew at the time that you were dreaming? If in doubt, please answer “No.” They were also asked whether they had ever induced a lucid dream or OBE deliberately.

Results

As expected the room was easiest to imagine from the subjects’ own eye level and most difficult from the feet. It was much easier to switch viewpoints to a position above the head (x = 3.7) than to one at the feet (x = 2.1). During these various exercises 22% of the subjects claimed that they saw themselves from the outside and 15% that they had another body in their imagined location.
The most common position of normal center-awareness was behind the eyes (65%). The next most common positions, the top of the head and the forehead, represented only 12% of the subjects. 6
Eighty-six (64%) of the subjects claimed to have had lucid dreams. Of these, 13 (15%) claimed to be able to have them deliberately. There were no age or sex differences between those who reported lucid dreams and those who did not. Subjects reporting having had at least one OBE were 22% of the sample. There was no association between those having OBEs and lucid dreams (X2(1) = .04).
The lucid dreamers were no better than others at the imagined viewpoint exercises. Subjects were given a combined score for their rated vividness of imagery from the different positions. The mean score for lucid dreamers was 14.6, for others 13.8 (t = .79, n.s.)
Lucid dreamers were no more likely to see themselves or to have another body during the imagery exercises, and they showed no differences in the normal position of “self.”
The one positive finding was that lucid dreamers were better at switching from one viewpoint to another, especially when switching from the normal position to one above the head (t(102) = 1.99, p < .05).

Experiment 2: Method

Subjects. Subjects were 187 students, mostly school sixth formers but also some university and adult education students. Ages ranged from 17 to 75, but most were 17 to 20. There were 98 females and 89 males.

Procedure. Subjects were given a questionnaire about their dream life and asked whether they had ever had an OBE. The lucid dream question was “Have you ever had a dream in which you knew at the time (i.e., during the dream) that you were dreaming?” Possible answers were: a. Never, b. Occasionally (e.g., 1–5 times,), c. Often (e.g., 5–20 times), d. Very often (more than 20 times) and e. Can have one whenever I like. They were then asked, in a way similar to that used by Nigro and Neisser (1983), to remember seven events and to write brief descriptions of these events, and they were then asked to say whether they imagined them as though from the observer’s position, seeing themselves in the scene, or from their current position, that is, as they would have seen it looking from their eyes. There were three “real life” situations to recall (first thing this morning, this time last Sunday and this time on Christmas Day) and four dreams (last night’s, last week’s, the best and the worst dreams they could remember). Subjects were also given the Edinburg Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971).

Results

The different recall situations differed markedly in the proportions of view-points used (see Table 1).
As predicted, the worst dreams were recalled more often in the observer perspective than the best dreams.
Thirty-eight subjects (23%) claimed to have had an OBE, while 152 (82%) reported having lucid dreams. The frequency of lucid dreaming is shown in Table 2. There was no association between having OBEs and lucid dreams (X2(1) = .25). There were no sex differences between lucid dreamers and others.
Lucid dreamers were more likely to report vivid dreams, and to enjoy their dreams. Contrary to previous findings (e.g. Blackmore 1982; 1983b) they were not more likely to have flying dreams (see Table 3). However, none of the correlations are very strong.
The relative percentages of lucid dreamers and others who reported using an observer perspective for the different questions were compared. No significant differences were observed (See Table 4).
There were no differences in handedness between lucid dreamers and others (X2 = .45, n.s.) nor in laterality quotient, a measure of the extremeness of handedness (r = 0.10).

Discussion

These results show that lucid dreamers differ from other dreamers in being better at switching viewpoints from one imaginary location to another. In this respect they are similar to OBErs. Indeed the ability to switch viewpoints most clearly distinguished the OBErs from others. One possible interpretation is that there is one skill which underlies both experiences.
However, no other significant differences were found between lucid dreamers and others.
One drawback to this study is that the percentage of subjects reporting lucid dreams depends upon only one question. It is quite possible that the size of the lucid dreaming groups are inflated by false positives. This could be circumvented by interviewing the subjects, giving more extensive questionnaires, or asking them to write an account of a lucid dream. This is a general problem, applying to the survey work on both OBEs and lucid dreams. It needs to be dealt with before more definite conclusions about the cognitive skills involved in having lucid dreams can be made.

###### References

Blackmore, S.J. (1982). Out-of-body experiences, lucid dreams, and imagery: Two surveys. Journal of the American Society of Psychical Research, 76, 301–317.

Blackmore, S.J. (1983a). Imagery and the OBE. In W.G. Roll, J. Beloff and R.A. White (Eds.), Research in Parapsychology, 1982. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press.

Blackmore, S.J. (1983b). Birth and the OBE: An unhelpful analogy. Journal of the American Society forPsychical Research, 77, 229–238.

Blackmore, S.J. (1984). A psychological theory of the out-of-body experience. Journal of Parapsychology, 48, 201–218.

Cook, A.M. & Irvin, H.J. (1983). Visuospatial skills and the out-of-body experience. Journal of Parapsychology, 47, 23–35.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1978). Lucid dreams: An electrophysiological and psychological study. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Liverpool.

Irwin, H.F. & Blackmore, S.J. (1988). Lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences: Two views. In J.I. Gackenbach and S. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. New York: Plenum.

Nigro, G. & Neisser, N. (1983). Point of view in personal memories. Cognitive Psychology, 15, 467–482.

Oldfield, R.C. (1971). The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburgh Inventory. Neuropsychologia, 9, 97–113.

Snyder, T.J. & Gackenbach, J.I. (1988). Individual differences associated with the lucid dreaming ability. In J.I. Gackenbach & S. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. New York: Plenum.

##### III.C.4 Manifest Content Analysis of Sleep Laboratory Collected Lucid and Nonlucid Dreams

###### JAYNE GACKENBACH

Athabasca University and University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

I have addressed two questions over the last ten years in my research program into lucid dreams: who is the individual who spontaneously experiences the lucid dream, that is, to find out if there is something unique about that person; and what is unique about the psychological experience of lucid sleep consciousness, beyond the awareness itself. I’m going to be talking about the latter today. Specifically, I’m going to be comparing sleep laboratory collected rapid eye movement (REM) lucid and nonlucid dreams.
In these content analyses we used Hall and Van de Castle’s (1966) system of analysis of the manifest content of the dream, focusing on a count of the act frequencies. We basically counted the number of elements. This is a simple kind of conceptualization of the psychological content of dreams but one we have used in the past because it allows comparison to normative samples and can be simplified for computer entry of the data. With this first look at the content of these dream experiences we can compare the data to both the classical literature on the psychological content of dreams as well as to the previous content analyses of questionnaire and dream diary collected lucid versus nonlucid dreams (Gackenbach, 1988).
The lucid dreams analyzed here are signal-verified, that is, with judge, technician and dreamer concurrence. For those of you who might not be familiar with the phrase “signal-verified” it means that the subjects signaled from REM sleep by means of a prearranged set of eye movements when they knew they were dreaming. Sleep laboratory technicians “read” the signal on a polysomnogram which was further verified by a concurrent report from the dreamer and examination of the record by an independent judge.
Table 1 lists the specifics of these two samples of dreams which were collected from three different sleep laboratories, although the majority of them are from the laboratory of my colleague, Stephen LaBerge. These 50 dreams are all from the REM sleep of twelve individuals. The nonlucid dreams are collected from two sleep laboratories, the majority from a sleep laboratory study we conducted in Iowa. These 28 nonlucid dreams, also all from REM sleep, are provided by seven people, all but one of whom had experienced dream lucidity. The major procedural qualifier that I would like to bring to your attention is that the majority of the nonlucid dreams were collected from lucid dreamers. We have preliminary indications from dream diary data that lucid and nonlucid dreamers may dream somewhat differently while nonlucid in sleep.
We computed 135 analyses of covariance with the number of words in the dream transcript as thecovariate. Word count is thought to provide a rough estimate of dream recall, but of course it is contaminated by verbal skills. However, because of the consistent superiority of recalling lucid versus nonlucid dreams (Gackenbach, 1988; Snyder & Gackenbach, 1988), one should always control for dream recall differences. For those of you who are not familiar with the Hall and Van de Castle system of dream content analyses I shall briefly summarize each of the scales before talking about our findings. The significant and conceptually interesting findings are summarized in Table 2.

Results

Hall and Van de Castle list five emotions which are looked for as expressed in dream transcripts: anger, apprehension, happiness, sadness and confusion. There were no differences between lucid and nonlucid dreams. This is somewhat surprising given the popular conceptualization of lucid dreams as joyful. In fact, we have data from self reports of emotions during lucid and nonlucid dreams which support this joyful aspect of lucidity (Gackenbach, 1978, 1988). What this finding points out is that the degree of joyfulness may be in the eye of the beholder, in this case the dreamer, which is not necessarily communicated vis-ŕ-vis the written description of the dream.
Next are the four types of character scales identified by Hall and Van de Castle: number, sex, age and identity (see Table 3 for details of each character subscale). You can see in Table 2 that for most of the character subscales there were no dream type differences but that where there was a difference, lucid dreams had fewer characters. This is consistent with previous analyses on non-laboratory collected lucid versus nonlucid dreams (Gackenbach, 1988).
The next set of scales are achievement and environmental press, where achievement is scored for success, failure and total achievement while environmental press is scored for misfortune, falling, threat, accident, injury, death and good fortune. As can be seen in Table 2 there were two differences with regards to achievement, more success and total achievement imagery in lucid than in nonlucid dreams. Again, with regards with success, this is consistent with the non-laboratory or home dream diary collected lucid dreams. These also tended to have more success imagery.
Next let’s look at the activities subscales which include: physical activities while being still, movement by the self, and location change, as well as verbal, expressive, visual, auditory and thinking activities. Here we found a difference favoring lucid dreams (see Table 2) in the “Physical (still)” subscale, which I think is largely accounted for by the task. You’ve got to move your eyes in order to have a signal verified lucid dream! Usually there is some reference in the dream transcript to the signaling procedure, which would be scored as “physical (still).” Interestingly, this is consistent with the non-laboratory lucid dreams where the demand characteristic was not present. Probably the magnitude of the difference, but not the entire finding, is accounted for by the demand characteristic. With regards to location change, which was also consistent with the non-laboratory data, there was a small and marginally significant difference favoring nonlucid dreams. However, in the non-laboratory dreams we also found differences for auditory and cognitive activities. That is, lucid dreams collected from home diaries and from questionnaires showed more cognitive and auditory kinds of activities than nonlucid dreams. This failure to emerge in the laboratory dreams is problematic, as these findings have been some of the most robust to date (Gackenbach, 1988). Perhaps the absence of a large enough sample of nonlucid dreams from nonlucid dreamers accounts for this lack of a difference.
In Table 4 we have a series of social interactions: sexual, friendly and aggressive. Let me point out that for the aggression subscales I summarized what I considered to be the relatively physical range, not allphysical but more aggressive, and the relatively less physical range, into two sum scores. We found two dream type differences: friendly assistance and covert aggression were higher in nonlucid than in lucid dreams. If you don’t have many people in a dream you are less likely to get interactions of any kind. I would like to bring your attention to the lack of a difference in the sexual activities subscales. Contrary to what has been proposed by a few individual lucid dreamers as characteristic of lucid dreams in general (Garfield, 1974; LaBerge, 1985) in this sample of laboratory dreams and in the dream diary and questionnaire data we found no differences in sexuality (Gackenbach, 1988). Further, in personal communication with Paul Tholey, who has been working with dream lucidity for 30 years, he concurs that sexuality is not naturally inherent to dream lucidity. This isn’t to say that it isn’t possible; it’s just not a knee-jerk reaction to dream consciousness.
Table 5 lists the dream element subscales for which we totalled positive modifiers and negative modifiers for two further subscales. Also found here are references to time as well as the number of negative and positive words in the dream. We found lucid dreams had significantly more positive modifiers. This is certainly consistent with the notion that lucid dreams are experientially more joyful dream experiences. However, these findings are inconsistent with the non-laboratory data where nonlucid dreams were found to be more achromatic than lucid dreams. These findings are complex and perhaps are best conceptualized in the context that most of the elements subscales failed to evidence a dream type difference. Finally, I have listed three marginally significant findings with regards to time. Lucid dreams from this sample of laboratory dreams had fewer old, young and event date references than nonlucid dreams. These findings are consistent and support the commonly held notion of the felt timelessness of the lucid dream experience.
Let’s consider dream bizarreness next. There are four basic conceptual ways in which we have looked at bizarreness: Animate Characters, Inanimate Environment, Transformations, and Metamorphoses (see Table 6 for the details of the subscales for each). You can see in Table 2 that three of the subscales from Animate Characters, one from Inanimate Environment and one from Transformations approached or reached conventional levels of significance. In terms of the magic subscale (i.e., impossible acts or magic by animate characters such as animals or babies talking or people flying) from Animate Characters we found a difference that was consistent with the non-laboratory findings as well as for the Transformation sum score. However, for the most part we found no bizarreness difference as a function of dream type.
Finally, I am going to speak about three scales which I find particularly interesting and are not part of the Hall and Van de Castle system: palpable or body sensations, control of dream content and emotional, physical and cognitive balance. In this sample of dreams we found that there was more dream control in lucid dreams, which is consistent with self report and dream diary non-laboratory dreams. Despite the sensitive issues surrounding dream control while lucid individuals reliably report being able to evidence this dream characteristic. There was also more balance in lucid than in nonlucid dreams. This is a characteristic of dream lucidity I initially identified in factor analyses of lucid dream content in my dissertation (Gackenbach, 1978) and have since shown is an individual difference variable related to the ability to dream lucidly (Gackenbach, Snyder, Rokes, & Sachau, 1986).

Summary and Conclusion

As with the non-laboratory content analyses by independent judges, the most important point to keep in mind is that lucid dreams are more like nonlucid dreams than dissimilar. The nature of the difference does not seem to be due to chance. By chance we would expect seven out of one hundred and thirty fiveanalyses to be significant. We’ve got 17 at the .05 level. Consequently we conclude that there is a difference which is meaningful but perhaps not substantive. Interestingly if one looks at dream type differences as evaluated by the dreamer both from dream diaries and the laboratory, large dream type differences have consistently emerged (Gackenbach, 1988). It can be seen in Table 7, in a new set of this type of data which have been previously unreported, that the results of a brief questionnaire, which was given to four individuals to fill out both at home and in the laboratory after they had awakened from a dream, support this self-evaluation trend. Of the 183 dreams evaluated along 12 dimensions 11 showed dream type differences. Many of these scales are essentially the same ones that the independent judges were asked to use to evaluate the dream. So the extent to which lucid and nonlucid dreams differ may be largely in the eye of the beholder.
While we are looking at Table 7 let me say more about it. We are not only looking at lucid/nonlucid dream type differences here, but you can see that it is further broken down into the nonlucid dreams of lucid (n = 2) versus nonlucid (n = 1) dreamers and the lucid dreams of a single sophisticated TM meditator. This data is drawn from a study examining the differences between dream lucidity and dream witnessing (Gackenbach, Moorecroft, Alexander & LaBerge, 1987). Please note two things beyond what I have already mentioned. First, the nonlucid dreams of the two lucid dreamers differed from the nonlucid dreams of the one nonlucid dreamer in three ways. They were more recallable, which may be due to their greater bizarreness and novelty. We distinguished between these two concepts in the questionnaire. Regarding bizarreness, we simply asked the dreamers how bizarre they found the dream to be, whereas with novelty we asked them to evaluate the dream in terms of how different from ordinary waking experiences they found it to be. This dreamer type difference in novelty for nonlucid dreams has also been found by Harry Hunt and myself in a larger sample of students who participated in a two week home dream diary study. The bizarreness question was not asked in that study. It would seem in order to have the propensity to dream lucidly one must dream oddly in general!
Regarding the dreams of the single TM subject, the conceptual framework for these findings can be found in the June, 1987 issue of Lucidity Letter.
We did one last set of analyses in order to try to account for dreamer type differences in both lucid and nonlucid dreams. Specifically, we split the laboratory collected dream samples into five groups. These are delineated in Tables 8 and 9. We compared three types of lucid dreams under three different circumstances to two types of nonlucid dreams under two different circumstances. Keep in mind that the dreams of three of these groups are from one subject each and that the number of dreams available for analyses were very small for two of the groups. For these reasons these analyses must be approached tenuously. As before, 135 analyses of covariance were computed on the five groups’ manifest content subscale scores with number of words in the dream as the covariate. Fewer scales reached conventional levels of significance and in fact, the differences could be accounted for by chance factors. The differences which did emerge were largely accounted for by the lucid dreams collected from the lucid dreamers. Most noteworthy, the dream control difference is accounted for by the difference between the lucid dreams of lucid dreamers and the nonlucid dreams of the one nonlucid dreamer. The lucid dreams of the TM subject and the nonlucid dreams of the lucid dreamers did not differ from these two extremes. This suggests that dream control of lucid dreams may be a function of individual difference variables, that is, of the style of dreaming regardless of the state of dreaming.

###### References

Gackenbach, J.I. (1978). A personality and cognitive style analysis of lucid dreaming. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Virginia Commonwealth University.

Gackenbach, J.I. (1988). The psychological content of lucid dreams. In J.I. Gackenbach & S. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. New York: Plenum.

Gackenbach, J.I., Moorecroft, W., Alexander, C. & LaBerge, S. (1987). Physiological correlates of “consciousness” during sleep in a single TM practitioner. Sleep Research. 16, 230.

Gackenbach, J.I., Snyder, T.J., Rokes, L. M. & Sachau, D. (1986). Lucid dreaming frequency in relation to vestibular sensitivity as measured by caloric stimulation. The Journal of Mind and Behavior: Special Issue: Cognition and Dream Research. 7(2&3). 277–298.

Garfield, P. (1974). Creative dreaming. New York: Ballantine.

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

Snyder, T.J. & Gackenbach, J.I. (1988). Individual differences associated with lucid dreaming. In J.I. Gackenbach & S. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. New York: Plenum.

##### III.C.5 A Validation of Lucid Dreaming in School Age Children

###### DEBORAH ARMSTRONG-HICKEY

Unites States International University

I’d like to begin by sharing a dream that I had fairly frequently when I was a child, between the ages of 6 and 12.
I was lucid. I would fly sometimes during the night and see the ocean glistening below me, and sometimes during the day where I would see my reflection. But the place that I went was always the same, a place called Bali. I often wondered what that could mean.
I don’t remember consciously recognizing where Bali was as a place in the world, but that is where I would go, and that’s where I would land.
Two and a half years ago, I began my dissertation, wondering what on earth I was going to study, and really wanting to do something that reflected who I was. Dreams, lucid and non, have always been close to me. I came to this study as a clinician working some ten years with children, young children, preschool to school age. I had originally intended on studying lucid dreaming as a treatment approach, particularly with children with nightmares, and children who had been molested. However, when it came time to gather a committee it became quickly apparent that there were no studies validating that lucid dreams even exist in children. So I made a leap from applied clinical work to this foreign, but very exciting and challenging area of psychophysiological study. I had hardly even stepped into a sleep laboratory before I did this study
I want to emphasize that the purpose of my study was to validate lucid dreams in school age children, not to study how to teach the skill or how to increase the skill in children who already have the skill, or even how to use it I chose to work with ten-, eleven-, and twelve-year-olds, based on Foulkes’ work. [Children of this age] are more able to define dreams as internally originating [and] show an increase in . . . seeing, talking, feeling, moving and manipulating things in their dreams. Furthermore, the rate of dream accessibility with respect to dream recall reaches a near-adult rate.

Method

There were three major parts to my study. The first way that I approached this problem was conducting a survey. [Second, I conducted a lucid dream training program, and collected dream diaries. Third, I conducted four sleep studies in a lab. The survey] was comprised of two multiple choice questions along with the opportunity to share content about lucid dreams. I asked the children how often they recalled their regular, nonlucid dreams and their lucid dreams. The rate of recall could have been never, once a year, once a month, once a week, once a night, or not sure. I personally introduced the questionnaire to the children and defined lucid dreams to them as dreams where we know that we’re dreaming while we’re dreaming, and I would give them an example. I conducted the survey with 40 boys and 60 girls;there were 30 ten-year-olds, 45 eleven-year-olds, and 25 twelve-year-olds
[The lucid dream training program included] 12 girls and one brave boy. Of these, there were six ten-year-olds, five eleven-year-olds, and two twelve-year-olds. I ruled out children who had any kind of diagnosed emotional problem, any kind of cognitive deficit or learning disability and children who were on any kind of medications.
I conducted the sessions weekly for six weeks; each session lasted an hour. I did everything and anything that I thought might help increase the skill of lucid dreaming in order to validate it. There was an opening and sharing time each week. We talked about pleasant dreams or things that I hoped would elicit their trust in both me and each other, [to] increase group cohesion and enhance the effectiveness of the group. There was also an educational component to the group. We talked about how different cultures utilize lucid dreams and the history of awareness of lucid dreams. There was also a dream review or recreating exercise, where I utilized expressive arts to help the children become more comfortable with their dream content; helped increase their dream recall, and helped them feel comfortable with having lucid dreams.
[In] this kind of exercise we would talk about a dream that they may have had and how they would change it, similar to Patricia Garfield’s redreaming exercise. We . . . [also] used all sorts of expressive arts. We used dramatic arts, clay, paintings, watercolors among others. I also had a relaxation portion of the training program where I took the children through a relaxation experience. I began with helping them feel comfortable with remembering their dream, being in their dreams, and finally toward the last three weeks of the training program developing lucid dreaming.
At the end of each session we talked about tasks that I had asked them to do Each child was given seven dream logs to complete [and] return to me at the end of each week. The dream log material included: content questions about the main character, how active they were in the dream, what their affect was during the dream, [and] whether or not they were lucid in their dream. If they were lucid, they were asked to include that specific content.
During the first two weeks I gave them a little bracelet to wear around to remind themselves that they were to do reality testing [five to ten times a day]. Reality testing [involves] saying, “Am I dreaming?” and then imagining what it would be like if you were dreaming. I instructed them on how to use the MILD [Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreaming] technique as well as redreaming. We also worked on some other ways [they could induce] lucidity like talking to themselves before they went to sleep.
The third [type of validation was through] four non-consecutive sleep studies with three girls and one boy. There were two ten-year-olds and two eleven-year-olds. The first sleep study was conducted prior to the training program. The second one was two weeks into the group then four weeks into the group, and lastly after the group was completed. During every sleep study I instructed the children how to make the prescribed left-right-left-right eye movements at thirty second intervals. We would then awaken them one minute after they stopped signaling, or in the morning.
During the second sleep study we also woke the children after each REM stage. During the third sleep study I made lucidity goggles . . . available to the children. Two of the children chose to wear them during some portion of the night, [but] we didn’t get a full night with the lucidity goggles. I considered it a positive validation of lucid dreams when we observed the eye movements during REM as a confirm in a verbal self-report by the child. In addition to these portions of the study, we addressed the content oflucid dreams versus nonlucid dreams with the dream log material. I also administered, pre- and post, the Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Rating Scale [to] the children to look at whether the lucid dream training program might have a beneficial effect on their self-concept.

Results

[About] 63% of the sample . . . reported recalling lucid dreams at least once during their lives. Of these 54% reported them . . . once a month or more. Ten-year-olds reported the highest regular recall of lucid dreams, with 63% reporting monthly. It is also interesting to note that 8% of the girls versus 17% of the boys reported never recalling lucid dreams, and 68% of the girls versus 56% of the boys reported that they had regular or monthly lucid dreams.
Recall of lucid dreams appears to go down, at least in this sample, as children age. 63% of the ten-year-olds reported monthly lucid dreams, 58% of the eleven-year-olds, and 36% of the twelve-year-olds. However, we need to remember that a lot of these children weren’t also reporting content. We have content material with the lucid dreams from the dream logs, but with the questionnaire we don’t have content on all of those dreams.
With the lucid dream training program, I wanted to mention that four of the children began the training reporting fairly frequent—once a month or greater— recall of lucid dreams. Two reported never having them, two reported once a year, two reported once a month, one reported once a week, one reported once [a] night, and five reported that they weren’t sure. Twelve of the 13 children reported at least one lucid dream in the dream logs.
During the first sleep study we had four eye movement signal observations and two reports. Two were confirmed. That was an exciting night. During the second study we had one observed and one reported [lucid dream], one being confirmed. During the third sleep study we had two observed and two reported, two being confirmed. During the fourth sleep study we had two observed and two reported, one being confirmed. In terms of the number of lucid dreams per subject in the laboratory, Subject Nos. 1 [and 2] had no lucid dreams, . . . Subject No. 3 had five lucid dreams, and Subject No. 4 had one. I might add that this third subject came in [every] night, sure about what she wanted to dream, dreamed it and it was lucid Two other children who didn’t have dreams in the lab did report lucid dreams in dream logs.

Specific Lucid Dreams

I want to read . . . examples of the lucid dreams . . . the children had. The first one is,
I saw a giant Mickey Mouse that was pink and orange and yellow. At first I was scared, and then I realized that it couldn’t be true and I must be dreaming. I thought it was funny then and I got to be as big as it was.
Here is an example from the little girl who had five lucid dreams in the lab:
I told myself to dream that I was in a ballet, and that I had point shoes, and that’s what I did. I had a lucid dream because I knew that I really couldn’t dance on point shoes.
Another one dreamed,
It was snowing. I realized that couldn’t be. Then I knew I was dreaming and I made it so that I was on a beach with palm trees next to an ocean.
As I recall, she wanted to go to both places for her holiday. [Here is another:]
My friends and I were in a house and some cowboys or something were trying to get some earrings, which S. and I were wearing, off of us. The way I found out that it was a dream was that I don’t have my ears pierced, and that it was an old house yet the soccer field at my house was there. My school was there. Then we went to the Del Mar Fair and I made it so that we got on all the rides for free, and got earrings free too.
This is a girl who dreamt that she was under the water, realized that she was breathing, and realized that she was lucid.
In conclusion, I think [this study confirms] that lucid dreams do exist among children. However, there are so many more areas to be explored, such as the development of the concept and understanding of dreams among children, especially among young children; looking at cross-cultural differences in awareness and understanding of dreams; and the relationship between creativity and children’s lucid dreaming. I will end with my dream. Yesterday Jill Gregory came by and we . . . began to play with this dream. We turned the letters around and Bali is “I Lab.”
Question: What is the earliest age you have heard . . . for a child’s lucid dreaming?
Armstrong-Hickey: Well, Stephen has had lucid dreams early in his life. I would say . . . with children in my clinical practice, the youngest age is six.
Question: I had lucid dreams around five, and I have a daughter that is nine years old. She had her first reported lucid dream at eight, and then another one at nine. Were the children in your study excited about it?
Armstrong-Hickey: Oh, they were thrilled. It was wonderful. It was a real exhilarating experience for me. I come from working clinically with children, so I see a slanted view of children, and this was a great experience.

# Part IV: Theoretical Approaches

## Introduction

###### JAYNE GACKENBACH

Athabasca University and University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Recently, the major psychological and psychophysiological frameworks for understanding lucid dreaming were reviewed (Gackenbach, 1991). In that review it was noted that several of the psychological approaches take an information processing view of lucid dreaming. Such perspectives range from conceptualizing lucidity in sleep as a cognitive tool through more fully developed approaches which include a model of “self.” This view of lucidity in sleep as one form of intensified dreaming along a self-reflectiveness dimension is an aspect of most frameworks. Lucid dreaming is also thought of as a bridge to post–formal operation functioning within dreaming sleep and thus related to the meditative traditions.
Psychophysiological perspectives on lucid dreaming have shown that lucidity is a significantly more aroused REM sleep experience then nonlucid REM sleep. The EEG and lucidity work is based on the association of lucidity to meditation focusing on alpha power and coherence. This sleep experience is also viewed from the framework of spatial skills especially as implicated in vestibular system functioning. Finally, the connectionist view of neural nets is another explanatory vehicle touched upon in this review.
This section of the commemorative issue of Lucidity Letter has a small segment of the theoretical perspectives which have arisen in recent years to account for the experience of knowing you are dreaming while you are dreaming. It will enable the reader to get some glimpse of how social scientists are beginning to understand lucid dreams. In addition, other sections of this special issue have papers which are of considerable theoretical interest.

###### Reference

Gackenbach, J.I. (1991). Frameworks for understanding lucid dreaming: A review. Dreaming: The Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. 1(2), 109–128.

##### IV.1 The Multiplicity of Dreams

###### HARRY HUNT

Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada

What I’d like to do today is to try to place lucid dreaming within the context of overall dream studies and dream research—and within the multiplicity of dreams. I want to show how a cross-comparison of the different forms or types of dreaming might give clues to the cognitive processes that may be involved in all dream formation. And in that context I want to look especially at the place of lucid dreaming, namely the special relation of lucid dreams to nightmares and so-called archetypal-mythological dreams. I will try to show, both descriptively and in terms of a small research study, that these three kinds of dreams seem to be the points where the process of dreaming is maximally intensified. Such maximal intensifications may help to show fundamental dimensions of all dreaming that get crystallized in these relatively infrequent special forms.
Now the idea that dreaming is a kind of conjoined multiplicity is not new. If you look back at the nineteenth century dream phenomenologies or at dreaming as understood in the ancient Greek and Roman world, or the dreaming of tribal peoples, you find this idea that dreaming isn’t one thing. It is a kind of multiple collection of forms and subforms. And if you put all of what I’d loosely call the phenomenological tradition together, most of these sources—nineteenth century, descriptive phenomenologies, ancient world, tribal societies—roughly agree on the following forms of dreaming.
You can certainly find reference to so-called “ordinary dreaming.” Some tribal people call these “little” dreams. They seem to largely be based on reorganizations of personal memories, and they may be relatively bizarre or relatively mundane. There is also some agreement that there is something like a somatic medical form of dreaming. Most of these sources would also want to distinguish a so-called prophetic-telepathic kind of dream. If one wants to talk naturalistically, I think we could talk about these as dreams of maximum intuitiveness, and put to one side the ultimate question of scientific reality. Certainly as a form such dreams have occurred in all peoples at all time.
Then we come to the so-called “big” dreams in tribal peoples. Jung used this term as well for dreams that phenomenologically and subjectively are a point of contact with the sense of the sacred. These kinds of “big” dreams, as I’m sure all of you know, are extremely prominent in tribal societies. They are dreams where the individual may make direct contact with the mythic archetypal beings of that society. And there is quite a bit of evidence from cultural anthropology that dreams like this are part of an ongoing cultural maintenance in that they are a source of direct renewal in mythological stories and art forms. The nineteenth century Romantic tradition of dream studies would see this so-called big or sacred dream as a point where dreaming is taken over by a kind of autonomous imaginative factor, having much less to do with memory, much more to do with an intrinsically creative imagination. And of course, this is the point of departure for Jung’s own approach to dreams.
Then again, most times and societies and peoples have talked about a nightmare form of dreaming, and here we might want to follow recent distinctions, and distinguish fantastic, bizarre nightmares ofmonsters and strange creatures from post-traumatic nightmares that tend to repeat, often seemingly endlessly, an actual trauma that has been suffered. We might want to separate both of these in turn from night terrors.
Finally, and very much to the point today, most of these sources identify something like a lucid-control dimension of dreaming. Whatever the hoopla about dream lucidity in the last ten or fifteen years, this is not a new phenomenon historically or cross-culturally. Aristotle mentions lucid dreams. The shamanistic traditions of tribal people, by strong implication, seem to be talking about a lucid control dimension of dreaming, because the classic forms of sacred or big dreams are very often induced and guided by the trained shaman. There is an element of lucidity in reaching a kind of launching point for these uncertain mythological encounters. Similarly, if we look at the Eastern meditative traditions we find what we are now calling lucid dreaming, identified in both the Buddhist and the Hindu traditions as the natural form of meditative state available during dream consciousness. In other words, the Eastern traditions present techniques for developing what we would call lucidity or a form of lucidity as a means of meditative growth.
Well and good. Dreams are a multiplicity. But what is worth pointing out is how much this idea goes against the fundamental assumptions of both the Freudian and the experimental laboratory tradition of dream studies. Freud, as many of you will remember, was after the essence of dreaming. For Freud, dreaming was primarily one thing. The Jungian James Hillman is quite eloquent in describing the way that Freud brilliantly synthesized the different multiple strands of nineteenth century descriptive dream studies. He points out that Freud took the Romantic tradition of dream studies, the ides that dreams were an extension of creative imagination, and relegated that to the dream-work proper, the mechanisms of visual representation, condensation, and displacement. He also took the rational line of thought in nineteenth century dream studies, the views that dreams were delirious nonsense and “froth,” and said “yes” for the manifest dream, but “no” for the underlying latent structure. Finally, the idea that dreams could express somatic states was relegated to his notion of biological instincts driving the process of dream formation (Hillman, 1979).
A brilliant synthesis, but the price was the exclusion of the natural varieties of the dreaming process. In fact, Freud had to take the variations of dreaming we are talking about today and redefine them as somehow not really dreaming. The most instructive example comes from his 1922 paper on telepathy in dreams. Near the end of that paper he says, in effect, well after all telepathy really has nothing to do with the essence of dreaming. He says that the essence of dreaming has to rest in his processes of dream work. If we find a dream that seems to be telepathic, “. . . let us instead call it a telepathic experience in sleep and not a dream, because a dream without condensation, displacement, wish fulfillment (etc.) hardly deserves the name.” Similarly Freud takes dreams that are mundane and true to daily life, and which we now know from laboratory research are the average form of dream, and says, well those aren’t really dreams either. Since there is no dream work in them, let’s call them fantasies instead. Jung’s archetypal-mythological form of dreaming, which I will talk more about later, is understood by Freud as the reappearance in the dream of fairytale motifs from childhood.
Lucidity, of course, becomes for Freud a defensive version of secondary revision. He knew about lucidity, and about St. Denys. But what we would call lucid dreaming becomes the ability of the dreamer to dismiss the dream and defend his or her self against threatening content by saying, “It’s only a dream.” You could wake up. You could ignore it. This certainly misses the subjective power of many accounts of lucid dreaming.
I think we find the same monolithic attitude to dreams within the laboratory experimental tradition. Here again we find dreaming considered as a single process. The interest is predominantly in the average or norm of dreaming. Since only ten percent of dreams by some reckonings are markedly or strikingly fantastic and imaginative, these researchers feel they can ignore such dream transformations, even though it is fantastic, imaginative dreaming that has historically been the source of fascination with dreams. Similarly, one finds in the laboratory tradition what I increasingly would have to see as a curious suspicion and discomfort with respect to lucid dreaming. What one ends up with then from the laboratory tradition is a similarly monolithic approach, now increasingly centered on cognitive approaches and on the idea that dreaming must involve some sort of memory reorganization or memory consolidation.
Now even if it is the case that truly imaginative dreams are rare, and that lucidity is only open to some people as a natural form of dreaming, we know already from the clinical, neurological and psychiatric traditions that you study the exceptions, the extremes of a phenomenon, in order to get at its underlying dimensions of construction. Such dimensions are hidden within the norms, hidden within the average, and get crystallized out in so-called special types. That brings us to an attempt to talk more systematically about the multiple forms of dreaming, before we get into some recent research on them. For this purpose I’m going to inflict on you my diamond of dream forms (see Figure 1), which hypothetically represents some of these dream forms in terms of systematic dimensions that would underlie all dreaming. These dimensions have nothing to do with frequency of dreaming, but more to do with underlying principles of dream generation. So, initially, we have a vertical dimension representing the vividness or intensification of dreaming. At the minimal level of vividness, on the bottom, we have dreams that are either predominantly mundane or relatively clouded and confused. These may very well be the most common form of dreaming, at least in the lab, and here perhaps we are dealing with dreams that are predominantly understandable in terms of memory models, as reorganizations of recent memories. At the maximum level of intensification, at the top of the picture, we have the dreams that I’ll talk about in much more detail in a moment and which probably reflect some sort of principle of formal or abstract self-reflection of the kind that interested Jung and Herbert Silberer and that may also be involved in the meditative traditions. Now along this vertical dimension there is a hypothetical point, a point at which memory models are insufficient and we need models of creative imagination metaphor, and intuition to make sense of the dreaming process.
In terms of the diamond structure there is also a horizontal dimension intended to represent the degree of symbolic integration or differentiation among these dream forms. The more integrated around one function, the narrower the pyramid. So ordinary dreaming, at the bottom, represents an integration and organization of the dreaming process largely in terms of the principles of semantic memory and language. Here of course we find Foulkes’s model of dreams as diffuse mnemic activation with the imposition of narrative structure (Foulkes, 1982). At the points of maximum differentiation, which it is not really my intention to talk about today, we find dreams that may be based on relatively separate imaginative-intuitive frames of mind: the somatic-medical form of dreams, dreams predominantly based on creative visual metaphors, and dreams based on various sorts of word play, some of it quite intricate and creative. Freud often dreamt in this form when his dreams became relatively fantastic. One would also need a panel for so-called telepathic-intuitive forms of dreaming. This would be the point where dreaming is in some sense directed towards conditions in the objective world. It might also include problem solving dreams in the context of scientific investigation.
What I really want to get at is the top of the pyramid, representing the points where the dreaming process is maximally intensified. Here we see the dreaming process integrated predominantly in terms of a visual spatial intelligence, rather than a linguistic one. These forms would be based on metaphoric visual kinesthetic fusions. This top section of the diamond, which includes lucidity, nightmares, and archetypal dreaming, is sufficiently intensified to be transitional to waking. This is something that both lucid dreams and nightmares have in common. They usually wake you up. You are right on the edge of waking. And as we’ll see, both lucid and nightmare dreams are about equally open to turning into the more archetypal form of dreaming. In fact the dreams at the top of the diamond occur in a kind of transitional or trance state that can probably be entered about as easily from certain waking conditions as it can from the dream state. Here we are addressing an overlap between dream phenomena and so-called altered states of consciousness, where dreaming becomes a potential transpersonal process.
Each of these forms of intensification would exaggerate a fundamental dimension of dreaming that would run through, albeit usually invisibly, all dream formation. Along these lines, we can take from Alan Moffitt the suggestion that lucid dreaming is one extreme on a dimension of self-reflectiveness, also heightened in meditative traditions, and which calls attention to the general human ability to be self-conscious —not very well and not very completely, but at least the potential to be relatively self-aware Moffitt et al., 1988). Nightmares might highlight a dimension of affect and kinesthetic sensation that is probably usually suppressed in most dreaming. Archetypal dreams with their subjective qualities of awe and sense of the uncanny, parallels with classical mythological stories, and encounters with mythological-spiritual beings, and their tendency to resist free association of the usual sort may show a visual metaphoric ability to self-present the total life context. Certainly both lucid and archetypal dreams easily develop towards experiences of geometric forms, of the sort described with psychedelic drugs, and experiences of white light similar to the mystical meditative traditions. This does imply that they have something to do with a visual-spatial form of intelligence.
I’ve added another category for the sake of completeness that we can term titanic dreams, a name adapted from Herbert Silberer for a form of dreaming closely related to archetypal dreams. I think Jung would have called them “archetypes of transformation.” These dreams can involve vivid, powerful kinesthetic feelings of flying, falling and spinning, sex and aggression (not just ordinary sex and aggression, but really perverse, nasty, driven forms of sexuality and aggression), and lots of forceful nature imagery—storms, seas and caves. Roheim called this the “basic dream;” I think these are very similar to what Kohut, the psychoanalyst, called self-state dreams. They often seem to function as kinesthetic metaphors, for general existential features of one’s own life. So at points of crisis one dreams of crashing to earth, or soaring over difficulties, or spinning in confusion. These may also call attention to what a number of cognitive psychologists have hypothesized as a kinesthetic core or aspect to human metaphorical thinking.
Hopefully having made some case for dreaming as a multiplicity and for certain forms as intensified dreaming, I would like to talk to you about recent research, at Brock and elsewhere, on these dreams of maximum intensification. Here we get more into the relation of lucidity to other dream forms. One thing that lucid dreams have in common with nightmares is that they are both transitional to waking. They also have in common a dimension of affective enhancement. Lucid dreamers often mention a peak experience-like quality to lucid dreams, a sort of rush of bliss and euphoria. But in nightmares you get a very similar kinesthetic rush of dread. I think that is quite striking in really good nightmares, the way they can sit you up in bed with really strong bodily sensations. Another thing that lucidity and nightmare dreaming has in common which again suggests that there is something common underlying them, isconsiderable sensory detail and vividness, especially kinesthetic. Jayne Gackenbach has brought that out with respect to lucid dreams, and Ernest Hartmann has mentioned it with respect to nightmares. And in fact the most common form of lucid dreaming occurs in the context of nightmares. Celia Green made this point years ago. It may be the least interesting kind of lucidity, but many, many people in the midst of stressful anxiety dreams suddenly realize, “My God, this couldn’t be happening. Oh, it’s a dream, I’ll wake up.” Similarly I would suggest that when we look carefully at Hartmann’s descriptions of intense nightmares, we find the subcategories of lucidity and prelucidity according to Celia Green. Hartmann mentions the tendency in nightmare dreams to question whether this could really be happening (Green’s prelucidity), to suffer false awakenings, and there is the tendency for nightmares to show Green’s apparitional pattern. In the latter, your dream is actually in your bedroom, maybe with an ominous feeling or bizarre intrusion (Gackenbach, 1988; Hartmann, 1984; Green, 1968).
As I mentioned before, I think one can make a good case from the descriptive literature that lucidity and nightmares are clearly transitional and lead in to this idea of archetypal and titanic forms of dreaming. Certainly some of the worst nightmares seem to involve pretty horrific occurrences of bodily mutilation, of the kind that you find described in some accounts of early schizophrenic onset and in shamanistic initiation dreams. Lucid dreaming seems to be transitional to so-called archetypal dreams as we have seen and is itself a form of meditative state. Certainly meditative states and lucid dreaming have in common the same heightening of a detached observational attitude—which, as Charles Tart rightly said, is very similar to Gurdjieffian self-remembering. They also have the same quality of peak experience in the sense of Maslow, and there is the same potential in both meditative states and lucid dreaming to unfold into experiences of vivid bright light, with feelings of sacredness, geometric forms of the kind that Jung called mandala patterns, and encounters with mythic half-man, half-beast beings. I reported last year on a study we did at Brock, of the dreams of long-term meditators, in which we found that the longer they had been meditating the more likely they were to report lucid-control dreams, and that their lucid dreams were characterized by archetypal categories (Hunt, 1987). In other words, there were accounts of light, geometric forms, flying, feelings of awe, and mythological beings. Jayne Gackenbach and Charles Alexander have extended these findings considerably, showing parallels in content and physiology between meditative states and lucid dreams (Gackenbach, Cranson & Alexander, 1986). Anecdotally we know from people like George Gillespie and Ken Kelzer that lucid dreams do seem to have this potential to transform themselves in a Jungian direction (Gillespie, 1988; Kelzer, 1986).
Up to now each of these dream types have been researched separately, although there are some implications of experimental overlap. We know from the research of Ernest Hartmann and Kathy and Denis Belicki that nightmare sufferers tend to test as highly imaginative and creative on various measures (Hartmann, 1984; Belicki & Belicki, 1986). We know from Hartmann’s studies of what I think turn out to be rather unusual nightmare sufferers, that these dreamers are hypersensitive to stress. Lucid dream research, almost entirely based on the work of Jayne Gackenbach, has shown lucid dreamers to be similarly highly imaginative and creative, and to have unusually developed spatial skills: abilities in things like embedded figures and block designs, and the mental rotation tests that torture so many people in college admission tests. Lucid dreamers also tend to have a highly developed sense of physical balance. Jayne Gackenbach has shown that lucid dreamers are quite responsive in terms of the vestibular system, and that they can walk a balance beam better than people who don’t lucid dream (Gackenbach et al., 1986). Now that may sound very strange, but it is quite similar to research on mystical experience. Paul Swartz at the University of Alberta, using the Hood questionnaire, measuring the tendency of people to have spontaneous mystical type experiences when awake, showed that the higher you scored onthe Hood test, the better visual-spatial coordination you had. His measure was pin the tail on the donkey (Swartz & Seginer, 1981). We replicated that at Brock. The least research has been done on archetypal dreaming, although Kluger developed a scale to measure it and Cann and Donderi have used it to show that people who dream in this archetypal style are highly intuitive and low on neurotic tendencies (Kluger, 1975; Cann & Donderi, 1986).

Present Study

All this brings us to our own study at Brock, done with Aurelia Spadafora. This was an experimental attempt, the first as far as we know, to compare lucid dreamers, archetypal-mythological dreamers, and fantastic nightmare dreamers. On the basis of all the information I’ve given, we hypothesized that lucid dreamers, archetypal dreamers, and nightmare dreamers would be highly imaginative. The lucid and archetypal people would have good spatial and balance abilities, and be high on the Hood scale of mystical experience. The nightmare people would correspondingly have poor balance, poor spatial abilities, and high stress. We advertised in school and town newspapers for people who dream in a lucid style, people who have fantastic nightmares as opposed to post-traumatic nightmares, and people who dream archetypally, which we defined for them much in the way I’ve done today. Since all of the subjects had very high levels of dream recall, we developed a control group similarly high on recall but as low as possible on the special types.
We started with a hundred subjects. Archetypal dreams in this first hundred were the most infrequent, with a mean of eight per year. Lucid dreams had a mean of 36 per year and fantastic nightmares had a mean of 24 per year so we did not do too badly in getting subjects with unusual dreams. All three of these estimates were significantly correlated with recall and with each other. Thus one can conclude that they are common or overlapping expressions of an intensification of the dreaming process, as also indexed by their high degree of recall. Yet they were different enough to permit some differential testing, and this is what I will describe to you today. We went after relatively pure groups. This was hard to do because we wanted people who were well above the mean on nightmares, but at or below the mean on lucid and archetypal. We ended up with ten nightmare sufferers in the pure nightmare group, eleven lucid dreamers, only four archetypal dreamers, and five who were mixed dreamers. The latter were unusual people. They were all respondents to the newspaper ad. They were almost twice the mean on nightmares of the pure nightmare group, almost twice the mean on the archetypal, and very high on lucid. They also had unusually high dream recall. Their average was ten dreams a week. The rest of the sample recalled five dreams a week. We now had three pure groups, the mixed group, and a control group of eleven. Apart from the mixed group they were all matched on dream recall, so dream recall can’t be an explanatory variable (except of course in the mixed group).
We then set about looking at group differences. (I want to emphasize here that this is an exploratory study, and I will be reporting some individual and group tests where overall group differences failed to reach significance—although most had F’s less than .10. At least I would argue that this study is suggestive of a way that dream research should go in the future.) With respect then to our measure of overall imagination, we used combined Z-scores from tests of imaginative absorption, thin boundaries, creative pursuits, and physiognomic cues (see Table 1). What we found was that the archetypal dreamers—even though there were only four of them—were significantly greater than both the pure nightmare and the control group. Now this is somewhat contradictory to Hartmann’s findings that nightmare sufferers are highly imaginative, but interestingly enough the mixed group—which I’ll try to show is probably very much like Hartmann’s intense nightmare group—was also significantly greaterthan both the nightmare and the control group on the imagination measure. We then looked at the Hood questionnaire for spontaneous mystical experience, which by the way correlated with all our measures of imaginativeness quite strongly. It probably measures, within an imaginative capacity, the ability to let go and undergo a positive alteration of consciousness. Here what we find again is that the archetypal group is significantly greater than the nightmare. The lucid is also significantly greater than the nightmare, while here the mixed group is in a level similar to the nightmare group. In other words the mixed group may be highly imaginative but they do not have positive experiences when they let go. Next we can consider the spatial ability measure. This was a combination of scores on the block designs and mental rotations. The lucid group was the highest and the nightmare the lowest of the pure groups. Only when the mixed group is added do we get significant differences, in that the lucid group was now significantly better on the spatial measure than the mixed group.
The balance measures were more complex. First of all we looked at the balance beam, and there we found, to our surprise, that the archetypal group was significantly greater than the lucid group, which is basically the lowest in balance. The archetypal group was also significantly greater than both the nightmare and the controls as well. Now that doesn’t fit with some of Jayne Gackenbach’s findings (Gackenbach et al., 1986).
On the other hand, we had another measure of balance, body sway with eyes closed and feet one behind the other. We took sway primarily as a measure of vestibular responsiveness, which I think makes some sense since we didn’t have anybody who had enough vestibular problems so that they actually fell, which would indeed have been nonadaptive. But within the normal range if you sway your vestibular system is responding, whereas lack of any sway may indicate nonresponsiveness. Here more as predicted, we found the archetypal group swaying the most, the lucid group next, and the nightmare least. The lucid and archetypal group were significantly greater than the nightmare group on the T-tests. The mixed group was generally in the middle in balance.
The least successful group comparisons were with the stress measures. What we found was that the nightmare group was the highest, the archetypal, control, and lucid were lower, but only the mixed group produced statistical significance, being significantly greater than the control group.
This brings me to the question, why were the nightmare people low in imagination, when previous studies have found them to be high? It could be a subject selection factor, in that if we compared with average dreamers who don’t recall that much a week, they might have been comparatively high on imagination. On the other hand, their Hood scores were quite low. I would suggest that we may have some indication of a defensive self-inhibition of imagination in the pure nightmare group. In other words, it is possible that what nightmare research has really been measuring is the extent to which nightmare sufferers also have lucid and archetypal dreams. Hartmann, in fact, went to the extreme of the nightmare phenomenon, and in doing so selected people who are extremely artistic, sensitive, and imaginative. It is likely that they had lucid (or prelucid) and archetypal dreams, as implied by his own accounts. In that case they would be like our mixed group: very imaginative, but with negative experiences when they let go, especially poor spatial abilities, and lots of stress. In other words, these are people, in contrast to the pure lucid and archetypal dreamers, who are in some sense victimized by their imaginations. It looks as though if you intensify the dreaming process and if you have poor spatial abilities, what you are in for is a disorganizing negative experience rather like a bad trip with LSD and perhaps on the same model.
A similar picture emerges with the correlations from the entire special sample of 41 (see Table 2). Whatwe find is imaginative measures correlating with stress, the Hood, ordinary dream bizarreness scores from home diaries, and archetypal dream categories. The nightmare and the lucid subject estimates were not in fact significantly correlated with imagination; only the archetypal estimates were. I think the implication is that future research on any one of these dream types had better ask about the others, since they have hitherto been confounded. There is a negative relation between nightmare estimates and both spatial abilities and the Hood, again reflecting the individual group comparisons. Finally subjects with good balance tended to have the most imaginatively transformed or bizarre dreams. An implication, consistent with Jayne Gackenbach’s work as well, is that good balance allows dreaming to develop. Perhaps you can tolerate better the different places the dream may take you if you have good balance.

Conclusions

With respect to some conclusions, each of the forms I was talking about today —the archetypal, the lucid and the nightmare—can be defined as positions on relatively independent dimensions. The archetypal and the lucid are closest. They are high on imaginativeness, spontaneous mystical experience and spatial abilities. The relationships are less clear with respect to balance, but certainly the archetypal had very good balance, and the lucid on one measure. Nightmare sufferers on the other hand were low on imagination, spatial abilities and balance. Again, intensified dreaming in the context of poor balance makes for trouble. An implication might be tai chi as a potential therapy for nightmare sufferers!
Intensified dreaming comes in two forms: one relatively organized and the other more disorganized. Vivid imagination combined with spatial abilities and balance allows the dream to unfold towards its archetypal, “big” form—the most imaginatively transformed development of dreaming and its point of maximum cultural impact as witnessed in the shamanistic and meditative traditions. On the other hand, poor balance may be part of the organismic “mechanism” of repression, self-inhibiting imagination in the form of low levels of dream bizarreness. Intensified dreaming in such a context would be associated with panic.
What is the place of lucidity in all this? In our findings it was midway between the archetypal and the nightmare measures. On the basis of this work, and on previous work that both Jayne Gackenbach and I have done, lucidity offers a stable access to the archetypal-transpersonal form of dreaming. The true significance of lucidity, its importance in terms of dream research, is as a gateway to this culturally significant form of dreaming. Here dream research approaches a natural transpersonal growth process, overlapping with the meditative traditions and based on a visual-kinesthetic imaginative capacity. This conclusion requires of cognitive psychology an account of creative imagination that goes well beyond its current preoccupation with memory and language.

Jayne Gackenbach: Let me clarify our findings on gross motor balance of lucid dreamers. Stabilometer performance was powerful in favoring lucid dreamers, while the balance beam was not. Stabilometer performance seems to be essentially the same as your body sway measure.

###### References

Belicki, K. & Belicki, D. (1986). Predisposition for nightmares: A study of hypnotizability, vividness of imagery, and absorption. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 42, 714–718.

Cann, D.R. & Donderi, D.C. (1986). Jungian personality typography and the recall of everyday and archetypal dreams. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 1021–1030.

The Multiplicity of Dreams, Harry Hunt

Foulkes, D. (1982). Children’s dreams: Longitudinal studies. New York: Wiley.

Freud, S. (1922). Dreams and telepathy. Sigmund Freud, collected papers, volume 4. New York: Basic Books.

Gackenbach, J. (1988). Psychological content of lucid versus nonlucid dreams. In J. Gackenbach & S. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. New York: Plenum.

Gackenbach, J., Snyder, T.J., Rokes, L.M. & Sachau, D. (1986). Lucid dreaming frequency in relation to vestibular sensitivity as measured by caloric stimulation. Journal of Mind and Behavior, 7, 227–298.

Gackenbach, J., Cranson, R. & Alexander, C. (1986). Lucid dreaming, witnessing dreaming, and the Transcendental Meditation technique: A developmental relationship. Lucidity Letter, 5(2), 34–40.

Gillespie, G. (1988). Without a guru: An account of my lucid dreaming. In J. Gackenbach & S. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. New York: Plenum.

Green, C. (1968). Lucid dreams. London: Hamish Hamilton.

Hartmann, E. (1984). The nightmare: The psychology and biology of terrifying dreams. New York: Basic Books.

Hillmann, J. (1979). The dream and the underworld. New York: Harper & Row.

Hunt, H.T. (1987). Lucidity as a meditative state. Lucidity Letter, 6(2), 105–112.

Kelzer, K. (1986). The sun and the shadow: My experiment with lucid dreaming. Virginia Beach, Virginia: ARE Press.

Kluger, H.Y. (1975). Archetypal dreams and “everyday” dreams: A statistical investigation of Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious. Israel Annals of Psychiatry and Related Disciplines, 13, 6–47.

Moffitt, A., Hoffmann, R., Mullington, J., Purcell, S., Pigeau, R. & Wells, R. (1988). Dream psychology: Operating in the dark. In J. Gackenbach & S. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. New York: Plenum.

Swartz, P. & Seginer, L. (1981). Response to body rotation and tendency to mystical experience. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 53, 683–688.

Tart, C. (1990). Mindlessness and mindfulness in daytime and nighttime dreaming. Lucidity Letter, 9(1), 49–81.

##### IV.2 Single-Mindedness and Self-Reflectiveness: Laboratory Studies

ALAN MOFFITT, SHEILA PURCELL, ROBERT HOFFMANN, ROGER WELLS, and ROSS PIGEAU

Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Rechtschaffen (1978) has suggested that dreams are categorically single-minded and isolated. The phenomenon of lucid dreaming, however, suggests that his conclusion is overstated. Furthermore, the empirical status of Rechtschaffen’s claim is uncertain. The data on which his claim is based are personal and impressionistic. We view single-mindedness and lucidity as related along a continuum of self-reflectiveness, as suggested by Rossi (1972) and as operationalized in a scale of self-reflectiveness we derived from his work. In order to examine his assertion we conducted two laboratory experimental studies to examine the distribution of self-reflectiveness and single-mindedness in the dream reports of high and low frequency dream recallers awakened from Stages REM, 2 and 4. Self-reflectiveness of dream reports was quantified using the nine-step scale presented below.
In Study One, 16 male subjects slept in our laboratory for three nights, with experimental awakenings occurring on the first and third nights. On the experimental nights, subjects were awakened from Stage 4 at the beginning of the night and from counterbalanced early and late REM and Stage 2 awakenings in addition to morning awakenings. In Study Two, the same awakening protocol was followed (initial Stage 4 awakening followed by counterbalanced early and late REM and Stage 2 awakenings prior to the morning awakening), except that subjects slept four nights in the laboratory and awakenings occurred on each night. There were 24 subjects in this study, 12 males and 12 females, half of whom were self-reported high-frequency dream recallers and half low-frequency recallers.
Results indicated that Rechtschaffen’s claim is correct if it is interpreted distributionally rather than categorically. In both studies reports from Stage REM were significantly more self-reflective than from Stages 2 and 4, which did not differ. The reports of high frequency recallers were significantly more self-reflective than low frequency recallers across all stages. The interaction of stage and subject type was not significant. Single-minded dreams, falling at or below Level 6 on the scale of self-reflectiveness, accounted for 80–90% of all reports. Higher levels of self-reflectiveness, up to and including spontaneous lucidity accounted for 10–15% of the dream reports. The correlation of self-reflectiveness with length of the dream groups, but much stronger in the high recallers than in the low recallers. Frequency of recall from experimental awakenings did not differ among the self-reported high and low frequency of recall subjects.
We suggest that Rechtschaffen (1978) and others (Hartmann, 1973; Koukkou & Lehman, 1983) have overstated the single-mindedness of dreams by ignoring the distributional character of the organization of consciousness during the dream state and focusing on only one end of a self-reflectiveness continuum. Stage effects appear to truncate the upper end of the continuum, primarily in Stage 4. Low frequency recallers show lower average levels of self-reflectiveness, including spontaneous lucidity. These dataimply a dynamic but inertial organization of consciousness during dreaming.

References

Hartmann, E. (1973). The functions of sleep. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Koukkou, M. & Lehman, D. (1983). Dreaming: The functional state-shift hypothesis. British Journal of Psychiatry, 142, 221–231.

Rechtschaffen, A. (1978). The single-mindedness and isolation of dreams. Sleep, 1, 904–921.

Rossi, E. (1972). Dreams and the Growth of Personality. New York: Pergamon Press.

##### IV.3 Dreaming: Lucid and Non

###### DAVID FOULKES

Georgia Mental Health Institute, Atlanta, Georgia

I restrict my comments to two areas where LaBerge’s remarks have implications for the study of ordinary (nonlucid) dreaming (which must comprise at least 99.44% of human dream experience). The first area is the potential of lucid dream techniques in addressing problems in mainstream dream psychology, and the second is where LaBerge discusses ordinary dreaming per se.

1. LaBerge indicates that lucid dreamers can solve the deficiencies of prior attempts at correlating sleep physiology and dream psychology: unlike nonlucid dreamers, lucid dreamers can be trained to remember to perform and to signal specified actions during the dream, thus making it possible to correlated dream events with their physiological accompaniments in a highly precise way. Now, it’s not surprising to me that if someone remembers that she’s supposed to hold her breath and then signals that she has in fact done this, the intervening recording would indicate a respiratory pause. But does this have anything to do with mind-body relationships during ordinary dreaming, which has, on the face of it, a different organization of mental functions than lucid dreaming, and in which people aren’t remembering or otherwise trying voluntarily to manipulate their real and/or imagined body state?
One answer might be that what is surprising is that people can remember that they’re supposed to hold their breath, can voluntarily attempt to do so, and can signal their accomplishment to the experimenter while asleep and dreaming. Well, yes and no. Yes, they’re asleep in the sense that LaBerge’s data indicate all this can happen without EEG “signs” of wakefulness and in the surrounding context of dream-like imagination. But both “sleep” and “dreaming” are defined by sets of convergent indicators, ideally by the convergence of all members of these sets. At least one member in each case is psychological—e.g., to be asleep is to be unaware and un-reflective in specifiable ways. If someone gives you “The Power of Being Awake and Aware in Your Dreams” (LaBerge’s subtitle), then it’s by no means clear to me that we’re still talking about sleep and dreaming in the usual way, nor that observations from awake-aware sleep and dreaming necessarily generalize to ordinary sleep and dreaming. Put another way, when a major component of any system such as sleep or dreaming is altered, it’s a different system. The kind of dream-content protocols LaBerge uses to illustrate lucid dreaming are sufficiently different from laboratory REM dreams (and from the remembered content of my home dreams) to lead me to believe that lucid dreaming is indeed a different animal than ordinary dreaming (and if it weren’t, why would LaBerge so enthusiastically be urging us to change our style of dreaming?). But he can’t have it both ways; if lucid dreams are different, their immediate general relevance is problematic.
How are they different? Here, it seems to me is where the most interesting implications for ordinary dreaming lie. Theoretically, the issue is this: when you change ordinary dreaming by adding a self which intends and reflects, what else changes alongside this change? This is one way of evaluating the role played by the absence of self in ordinary dreaming, and is perhaps the point at which lucid dreaming data could be most relevant to ordinary dream psychology. However, at present, there seem to be no systematic data comparing the REM-monitored lucid vs. nonlucid dreams of the same dreamer. Lucid dream research seems to be repeating the same mistake ordinary dream researchers made a couple of decades ago: namely, it’s doing all kinds of research but the most basic kind: good phenomenological description and comparison. LaBerge himself notes that not all lucid dreamers agree on the nature of lucidity, which further suggests the need for standardized data collection and evaluation—in the laboratory.

2. At several points, LaBerge’s account comes to focus on ordinary dreaming. I take exception to the following of his assumptions about such dreaming.

Dreaming is more like perceiving or living life than like imagining. This assumption justifies attempts to make dreaming lucid—if this is what dreaming is, why not be fully aware? Dreaming no doubt simulates waking experience, and far better than waking imagination or mental imagery generally can. Moreover, this simulation is accomplished through recruitment of systems and processes used in perception and real world adaptation. But these facts do not refute the key observation that dreaming is symbolically instigated—that it is imaginative hallucination rather than perception. That dreaming is different from perception and life is just this way raises interesting questions for lucid dream advocates. Is it necessarily as adaptive to be self-aware in dreaming’s kind of cognitive reprocessing as it is in waking sensory processing? If so, why is nonlucidity so pervasive during dreaming?

“Perceptual vividness is probably the main criterion we use to judge how real something is” (p. 89). Thus, waking mental imagery is typically not hallucinatory because it is “pale,” and dreaming is hallucinatory because it’s vivid. On the evidence, and on some of LaBerge’s own arguments, this assumption must be false. Some people can have highly vivid episodic recollections or waking imagination experiences without hallucinating, and many people have “pale” and sketchy non-REM imagery which they take to be “real.” And, the distinction between lucid and nonlucid REM imagery is not so much in the quality of its imagery as in the interpretation given the imagery. LaBerge’s (and others’) suggestions for inducing lucidity are techniques for altering not image quality but the quality of the interpretation or comprehension supplied to imagery. LaBerge’s “levels” of lucidity are levels of comprehension, specifically, degrees to which the dreamer has access to her or his full mnemonic repertoire.

REM sleep = dreaming. For LaBerge, if chickens and human infants have REM sleep, they dream, and the function of dreaming is formally identical with the function of REM sleep. It’s surely clear by now that dreaming can and does occur in the adult human in other states than REM sleep. There also are both data and conceptual considerations suggesting that dreaming may have cognitive prerequisites making it much less pervasive phylogenetically than is REM sleep. Thus, REM sleep is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of dreaming. LaBerge’s own account makes it clear that lucid dreaming occurs at sleep onset, and his observations in fact suggest that sleep onset may be a more appropriate reference point than REM sleep for lucid dream phenomena. At sleep onset, as in lucid dreaming, various features of a standard (nonlucid) dream-production system can be altered in interesting ways with instructive consequences. Because altered (or defective) operations of a system often are most revealing of its components and their functions, lucid dreaming has the same potential for elucidating REM dreaming as do extra-REM forms of dreaming. But, lucid dreaming’s value won’t be the sort that LaBerge promises—where observations from lucid dreaming can be generalized immediately and directly to nonlucid dreaming. Rather, it will come from the kinds of inferences we can draw from reliable differences between the two phenomena.

Reference

LaBerge, S. (1985). Lucid Dreaming. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.

##### IV.4 Reply To Foulkes

STEPHEN LABERGE

Stanford University, California

David Foulkes is quite correct in noting that when it comes to lucid dreaming we are no longer talking about sleep and dreaming in the “usual” way. Dream lucidity is a paradoxical phenomenon: to resolve the paradox requires a broadening of our understanding of the varieties of dreaming experience and a clarification of our usage of such terms as “sleep,” “awareness,” and “unconsciousness.” For example, Foulkes asserts that “to be asleep is to be unaware and unreflective in specifiable ways.” Thus he finds it problematical to hear lucidity described as “being awake and aware in your dreams.” How could this be sleep?
The answer is that to say “X is asleep” is vague; what this is probably intended to mean is that “X is asleep with regard to the external world,” i.e., not in sensory contact with it. In one sense lucid dreamers are aware of the external world: they usually know where they are sleeping. But as LaBerge et al. point out, “this knowledge is a matter of memory, not perception” (1981, p. 731). As for “convergent indicators,” both subjective reports and physiological evidence indicate that lucid dreams typically occur during sound sleep (with regard to the external world).
Foulkes objects that the reports I used to illustrate lucid dreaming seem different enough from ordinary dreams to suggest that the two are “different animals.” Of course, these lucid dream reports don’t sound like the “usual” nonlucid dreams (75% of which according to Snyder, 1970, make very dull reading). They were selected precisely because they were interesting. Lucid Dreaming was written with the general reader in mind; there was no room for dull examples (LaBerge, 1985). As for prosaic lucid dreams, I have hundreds of examples in my personal record. For quantitative comparisons of lucid and nonlucid dream reports, see the work of Gackenbach and colleagues (i.e., Gackenbach & Schillig, 1983).
Foulkes takes exception to what he regards as an “assumption” on my part: that “dreaming is more like perceiving or living life than like imagining.” LaBerge (1985) presents evidence showing that physiological reactions to dreamed actions were greater than those to imagined actions, and concludes, rather than assumes, that “this suggests that lucid dreaming (and by extension, dreaming in general) is more like actually doing than like merely imagining” (p. 88). Speaking of assumptions, Foulkes appears to regard the notion that “dreaming is symbolically instigated” as an observation rather than hypothesis. As I explain at length in Chapter 8 of Lucid Dreaming, this is at best a debatable point.
Foulkes further suggests “that sleep onset may be a more appropriate reference point than REM sleep for lucid dream phenomena.” However, no clear basis for this claim is provided: although lucid dreaming has on occasion been observed at sleep onset, this is in no way typical. In fact, the great majority of lucid dreams appear to occur in the context of the REM state.
“Is it necessarily as adaptive to be self-aware in . . . [the dream] . . . as it is in waking. . . ?” and “if so,” asks Foulkes, “why is nonlucidity so pervasive during dreaming?” This reminds me of a question that one might have overheard in the not so distant past: “If writing were really useful then why is illiteracy sopervasive?” As for the question of whether consciousness is as adaptive in the dream as in the waking state, I refer the reader to LaBerge (1985, Chapter 1, especially pp. 6–7), where the argument is developed that the special usefulness of conscious, deliberate action is that it permits more flexible and creative response to unexpected, non-routine situations. Thus, consciousness appears to offer the same advantages to the dream as it does to the waking state. Note that this does not mean that it is always desirable to act deliberately whether asleep or awake.
Foulkes gives the impression that he considers lucid dreaming to be valueless except insofar as it elucidates the features of ordinary nonlucid dreaming by its “defective operations.” Leaving aside the odd notion that lucidity is a cognitive defect, why in any case, should the importance of lucid dreams derive solely from their similarities or differences with nonlucid dreams? Creative thinking may not be very much like ordinary thinking: does that make creativity unimportant? I believe that the relative rarity of lucid dreams has led some researchers (including Foulkes) to dismiss the phenomenon as “insignificant.” True, nonlucid dreaming “must comprise 99.44% of human dream experience.” But that doesn’t make lucid dreams nonexistent or unimportant. To say that dreams are essentially non-reflective is as misleading as the parallel claim: “mammals do not speak.” This later assertion is true of the vast majority of mammalian species with only one exception in 15,000—Homo sapiens. Whether this singular exception appears significant or not may depend upon one’s scope of vision and research interests. But in any case, we would miss the essence of what a mammal is to say they are creatures that do not speak (or swim, fly, etc.) even if most of them do not. Let us not make the same mistake in regard to dreams.

References

Gackenbach, J.I. & Schillig, B. (1983). Lucid dreams: The content of conscious awareness of dreaming during the dream. Journal of Mental Imagery, 7(2), 1–14.

LaBerge, S., Nagel, L., Dement, W. & Zarcone, V. (1981). Lucid dreaming verified by volitional communication during REM sleep. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 52, 727–732.

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

Snyder, F. (1970). The phenomenology of dreaming. In H. Madow & L.H. Snow, The psychodynamic implications of the physiological studies on dreams. Springfield, Illinois: C. Thomas.

##### IV.5 From Lucid Dreaming to Pure Consciousness: A Conceptual Framework for the OBE, UFO Abduction and NDE Experiences

JAYNE GACKENBACH

Athabasca University and University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

In order to gain a theoretical understanding of the lucid dream, out-of-body experience (OBE), unidentified flying object abduction experience (UFO), and near-death experience (NDE) it is necessary to place things in their series, as William James, author of the 1902 classic The Varieties of Religious Experience, emphasized. That is, identify the similarities and differences between experiences in order to understand their nature. The goal of such an inquiry is to identify a common state from which they derive and/or common mechanisms or structures. In this paper lucid dreaming will be framed with the apparently different but related phenomena of three of the cases presented in the June, 1989 issue of Lucidity Letter: the OBEs of Father “X,” the UFO abduction described by Felicia Payne and the NDE of Mark Block. A fourth case from the same issue, the witnessing experiences of Anja Savolainen, is also relevant later in this discussion.
The most obvious set of experiences which lucid dreaming should be considered alongside of are all other dreams, ranging from the mundane true-to-daily-life to the highly bizarre, archetypal, life-changing sleep experiences. These comparisons are considered at length elsewhere (Gackenbach, 1988; Gackenbach & Bosveld, 1989). Essentially, lucid dreams at the lowest level of consciousness in sleep, are dreams with few content differences from the nonlucid variety. However, I (Gackenbach, 1991; Gackenbach & Bosveld, 1989), as well as others (Alexander, 1987), have argued that entry-level lucidity is only the beginning of the development of consciousness in sleep.
Less obvious but still frequently mentioned in association with the lucid dream is the OBE. During an OBE one has the feeling that one’s “self” has left the body and is “viewing” it. People who dream lucidly are also more likely to report having had OBEs (Irwin, 1988). Further, the lucid dream has been frequently presented as a jumping off point for the OBE. Related to OBEs and lucid dreams, are NDEs and UFO-abduction experiences. Experients of the latter two often report OBEs in association with their experiences. Some preliminary work has also shown a relationship to lucidity for NDErs.
Some of these associations are seen in the three cases in the June, 1989 issue as well as in the OBE, NDE, and UFO abduction literatures. To begin with Father “X”: over many years and many experiences this Catholic monk clearly concludes that his apparent OBEs are lucid dreams. Then in the UFO abduction of Bill, as told by Felicia Payne, the contextual material given after the case clearly shows that not only has Bill had OBEs at will since childhood but he also is frequently conscious in sleep. Of coursethe most obvious link is that throughout his “abduction” experience he himself attributed it to a dream and thus it could be conceptualized as a lucid dream. Finally, the NDE case of college student Mark Block is an example of consciousness in the deepest form of sleep, coma.
The thesis I will be presenting is that although these experiences (OBEs, UFO abductions and NDEs) are misattributions of “reality,” they are related in some way to lucid dreaming, an experience which by definition is an accurate “reality” attribution. Further, I will show that lucid dreaming is closely related to the practice of meditation and thus to the experience of pure consciousness or contentless awareness that is sought by the meditative traditions. It is in tracing this line from three misattributions (OBEs, NDEs and UFO abductions) to an accurate attribution (lucid dreaming) and on to pure consciousness that we can grasp the role each experience plays in the development of higher states of consciousness. I will begin this discussion by briefly examining each misattribution and its relation to lucidity. I will then show that lucidity is closely related to meditation and further serves as a bridge to higher states of consciousness such as pure consciousness.

Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs)

Immediately prior to the current work on lucidity western references to this nocturnal experience were almost exclusively found in the literature discussing the OBE. OBEs have been known to occur in deep meditative states and while under the influence of psychedelics. They are commonly associated with NDEs, and occasionally while engaged in some other activity. The majority of OBEs, however, arise at or near sleep with the next most frequent precipitator being periods of extreme waking stress. Of those associated with sleep, Hunt and Ogilvie (1988) explain, “it is as if a dreaming sequence starts but, atypically, awareness of one’s actual setting in time and space is not dislodged as in most dreams.” Rather, the dreamer integrates “the imaginal participations of the dream with a detached self-awareness that knows one’s actual context for what it is.”
Another perspective is that of LaBerge (1985) and colleagues (1988) who argue that OBEs are misinterpreted dreams. They point out that the REM sleep hypothesis has been rejected by most OBE theorists based largely on the failure of the few physiological studies of OBEs to identify REM sleep phenomenon associated with the OBE. However, in a recent study LaBerge et al. (1988) content-analyzed 107 signal-verified lucid dreams (i.e., presence of consciousness in sleep verified by a prearranged eye movement signal executed by the dreamer from REM sleep). Ten of the reports were identified as OBEs based on phrases in the report such as “I . . . felt that I had left my body” or “I was floating out of body “ They concluded through subsequent analyses that the activation of body schema was important in these cases, and that “because of the discrepancy between the remembered state of the physical body and the current experienced state of the body image, the subject constructs a perception of a mobile body leaving an immobile body.”
Rogo (1985) counters LaBerge’s arguments by pointing to the wide variety of physiological characteristics that have been identified with the OBE. Outside judges, he points out, typically cannot classify them as clear-cut sleeping or waking experiences. Nonetheless, LaBerge’s data clearly suggests that the REM state hypothesis needs to be more seriously considered in accounting for at least some OBEs.
To return to the more classic OBE theories, Blackmore (1988) points out that there are two types of theories of the OBE, ones that postulate the “soul, astral body, spirit, or whatever leaves the body temporarily in an OBE and permanently at death,” and “psychological theories of the OBE that deny thatanything leaves the body and posit that the experience is one of the imagination.” Most current theorists favor the latter and note the multiple parallels between lucid dreaming and OBEs, thus postulating a common cognitive mechanism for both (Blackmore, 1988; LaBerge, 1985).
Irwin (1988), however, argues that lucid dreams and OBEs are neither “phenomenologically or neurophysiologically equivalent.” Nonetheless because of their strong association, they reliably occur in the same people and he too has searched for common mechanisms. Blackmore, on the other hand, argues that both are due to the same sort of mental model building. Irwin points to the arousal/stress factor in the initiation of both. These may be collapsible by postulating that at two points the system is forced to create a new mental model of its experience thus resulting in the reorientation of the perception of the locus of “self” as “outside” the physical body.
The most frequent condition is one where the system is denied sensory input, as when one is near or during sleep. Without sensory input as to the appropriate location of “self” the system is more able to locate “self” elsewhere. Although in the case of sleep mentation “self” is still most frequently “located” in the dreamed body, dual self, flying selves, etc. are much more common in this state than while awake.
The second condition is one where the system is on sensory overload, as with extreme physical and emotional stress. Due to the negative consequences of such overloads “self” relinquishes its identification with body and “locates” elsewhere. So in the first case the system lacks a referent (sensory input) to locate self whereas in the second case the referent (sensory/emotional input) is overloaded and thus abandoned. My one and only waking OBE illustrates this relationship. After 32 hours of labor with my first child I was, needless to say extremely fatigued, and in enormous pain. A fantasy kept running through my mind, in between screams of pain, that I wanted to jump off the birthing table and run away from all this. Quite suddenly I found my “self” viewing from above and behind my body on the birthing table with my husband standing at my side. I remember thinking to myself, “This is more like it!” while feeling a great sense of relief—but alas! I quickly found myself back in my body with my daughter eager to exit!
After the extreme physical and emotional overload of 32 hours of labor I reconstructed my mental model of “reality” by placing my self “outside” of a body with which I was singularly displeased. Such a model of sensory detachment due to under or overload has also been proposed by Fisher (1971) with regard to mystical experiences and meditative states and will be discussed in more detail later in this paper.

Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)

Hunt’s (1989) description of lucid dreams and OBEs as experiences of “intensified self-reference” (a detached observation maintained with a dreamt or lived participation)—also applies to several other states. NDEs, which occur during periods of the severest biological stress, combine intensified self-reference with imagery common to the OBE such as the tunnel through which one travels and the white light of the void. Further, the OBE is one of the most common features of the NDE.
One way to view the relationship of the NDE to lucid dreams is nicely illustrated in this lucid dream following an NDE of retired physicist John Wren-Lewis (1985). Concerned that drinking too much wine would disrupt the mystical consciousness he seemed to have attained following an NDE, Wren-Lewis dreamt:
He seemed to have a special responsibility for instructing me in how to handle this strange post-mortem existence, and when he mentioned wine I suddenly became lucid. I knew this was a dream, in which my ghostly invisibility symbolized my post-NDE state and the dream-characters who could see me were the people who in waking life recognized that I was living in heaven here on earth, dead to “this world.” I also knew I was creating this dream to explore my concern about drink and mystical consciousness, and I became aware of lying in bed in our apartment overlooking Sydney Harbor Bridge with my mouth dry from mild alcoholic dehydration.
Wren-Lewis continues with a key realization in the dream:
With a flash I saw that the real threat to mystical consciousness lay not in drink itself but in getting caught up into an internal dialogue about drink, and to celebrate this “breakthrough” in dream-terms I walked straight through the wall of the dream-room. As I emerged into the street by the harbor my dream was flooded with mystical consciousness, and not as something new, but as a simple recognition of what had actually been there all along, the exact same sense I have been having when I click back to the [mystical] consciousness in waking life. I flew over the water, borne by a wind I knew to be the breath of God on creation’s first morning, and fainted at the beauty of it all—to wake in bed, my eyes brimming with tears of gratitude.
On more empirical grounds two survey studies have looked directly at the NDE/lucid dream relationship. Kohr (1982) identified three groups of respondents, who differed in whether or not they had had an NDE. The experiencing group indicated they had come close to death; had a deep, moving personal experience, and had one or more of the six types of experiences described in the research on NDEs. A second group indicated that they had come close to death and may or may not have had a moving personal experience. The third group was referred to as the non-experiencing group, composed of persons who had never come close to death. In terms of dream states the experiencing group reported a greater frequency of unusual dream states, including lucidity.
Greyson (1982) also looked at this relationship and writes: “I have already asked about the occurrence of lucid dreams in one questionnaire (a shortened version of John Palmer’s Survey of Psychic Experiences) administered to self-selected members of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS). Among the “controls” (i.e., IANDS members who have not had NDEs), 83 out of 155 respondents (54%) reported having had lucid dreams, which is roughly what Palmer found among his sample from the general population. Among near-death experiencers, 13 out of 62 respondents (21%) reported having had lucid dreams prior to their NDEs, and 33 (53%) reported having had lucid dreams since their NDEs. Thus, a fairly low percentage of near-death experiencers had lucid dreams before their NDEs, while after the NDE, this percentage rises to the level among the IANDS controls and the population Palmer sampled.”
Of course, this correlational data should not be viewed as causal. Although Greyson’s data suggests that an NDE experience may increase the frequency of lucidity an alternative explanation would be that NDErs had a tendency to perceive and/or report more of any type of extraordinary experience since their NDE. Nonetheless both studies point to the possibility that there may be a common mechanism or state which relates both experiences.

Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) Abduction Experiences

It may surprise the readers that the UFO abduction experience is another waking experience which can be conceptualized as related to the lucid dream/OBE/NDE range of phenomenon. Of course the problem with these experiences is that many who have had them claim that they do not lie in the mental realm but rather are physical, and thus real experiences. Let’s put physical considerations aside for the moment and consider the mental aspects of these experiences as several contemporary psychologists have done, starting with Carl Jung (1964).
Probably one of the most psychologically-based explanations for the UFO abduction experience is offered by Bird (1989). She points to confabulation as “the simplest psychological mechanism fueling UFO accounts.” Confabulations are something we all do in storing and retrieving memories. Bird explains that UFO stories “may well be confabulations, tapestries stitched together from actual experience, the stories of others who were there, events that have happened since, and perhaps a dash of wishful thinking.” However, those with fantasy-prone personalities, she argues, are especially prone to such memory distortions. With the appropriate cue, such as the current fascination with science fiction, horror and space travel, an experience which 100 years ago might have been attributed to then fashionable creatures is today attributed to an alien abduction.
As with the OBE, many, but not all, of the abductions occur during or near sleep. Again hallucinations from hypnagogic (presleep), hypnopompic (postsleep) and incomplete arousals during sleep can be brought to bear to explain these experiences. As we fall asleep and wake up and for those momentary intrusions of wakefulness into sleep we are all much more prone to hallucinate and are more suggestible. As described by Payne, Bill himself attributed his entire UFO abduction to a dream while it occurred. Furthermore he had a history of extraordinary sleep experiences.
Calls to fantasy-prone personalities and sleep-related hallucinations no doubt account for some of what occurs in these experiences. However, the often-found attitude of those offering purely psychological explanations, i.e. “rational people view the stories with amusement” (Bird, 1989), does a major disservice to both the experience itself and those having it. These sorts of condescending attitudes to extraordinary but not psychotic experiences are a hindrance when trying to come to an understanding of them. There is an assumption inherent in this attitude, that consensus reality is not really a mental model created by us (Yates, 1987). Further some current models of physical reality from quantum physics argue that consciousness, and not matter, is the stuff of the universe (Hageline, 1984).
Let’s consider another perspective while remaining in the realm of the mental. Grosso (1985b) notes:
T he UFO mythology is a mythology of science, gussied up in ideas of extraterrestrial civilizations, future worlds and higher technologies Compared with ancient and primitive societies, modern scientific culture offers few inlets to the healing powers of the collective unconscious. This archetypal model came originally from Jung (1964) who saw UFO phenomenon [sic] as signs of the end of the era. He writes, “Apparently they are changes in the constellation of psychic dominants, or the archetypes, or ‘gods’ as they used to be called, which bring about, or accompany, long-lasting transformations of the collective psyche.
Relatedly, the most well-known UFO abductee, Whitley Strieber (1988), hits the nail on the head about the potential of these experiences. He explains that he is:
. . . a thinking person who by no means buys the extraterrestrial explanation. However, I don’t feel that a simple psychological explanation is in order, either. Something else is going on, something akin to the transcendental, visionary experience that has always been with humanity. I myself try to make use of this experience the same way that a shaman on the steppes of Central Asia two thousand years ago made use of his startling vision of the world of the dead—by telling my story and bringing my dreams back to society. Perhaps we had better try to stop laughing at this state and start trying to describe it, because an awful lot of people believe they are experiencing contact with higher beings and another world. If we don’t stop imposing interpretations and narratives on the experience, we may find ourselves in the grip of the most powerful religion the world has ever known.
Whether his prediction of these experiences as a potential “powerful religion” comes true, his advise to not ignore them should be taken by those interested in the range of conscious experience.
Let’s return to our analysis of the UFO abduction experience in the context of other experiences. Strieber (1988), among others, has pointed to the OBE experience as associated with the UFO abduction. Further, Ring (in press) found in an informal poll of UFO experients that more than half had also had an NDE. Arguing that the UFO abduction (UFOE) and the NDE are both contemporary shamanic journeys he notes, “At the phenomenological level, NDEs and UFOs are of course quite dissimilar, but it is in their ‘deep structure,’ as it were, rather than in their surface contextual manifestations that important commonalities can be discerned.” By placing these experiences as shamanic initiations Ring puts them squarely in the “world of imagination.” His understanding, however, of this world is that “persons and places are fully real; they are as real in that domain as our physical world is to our senses,” and as are dreams while we dream them. But why, Ring asks, does one go on a shamanic journey? To educate the Soul is his answer. The soul is imagination (Avens, 1980).

Integration of OBE, NDE and UFO Abductions with Lucidity

These three experiences, OBE, NDE and UFO abduction, are some of the few imaginal realms that are more “real” than dreams but like dreams they carry the same inaccurate attribution. For most of us dreams are the strongest experiences of the mind that appear to occur “outside” of consensual reality. When we dream, while in the dream, it feels real. Even if we know it to be a dream while still in the dream (lucid dream), it still feels real. But in the vast majority of dreams we suffer a peculiar “singlemindedness” (Rechtschaffen, 1978) in that we are sure we are awake. We have no idea that we are dreaming while we dream. So too, in the “waking” dreams of OBEs, NDEs and UFO abductions, we are certain that what is occurring is “real” in the sense of loosing its felt sense of reality or object of permanence. And so, too rarely might an experient of these experiences accurately attribute the true nature of his or her state. Accurate attributions are the exceptions, not the rule.
This experience from Worsley (1988), the first lucid dreamer to signal from sleep that he knew he was dreaming, illustrates my point. In speaking about the lucid dreaming which he directly enters from the waking state by lying for up to two hours on his back and not moving Worsley comments:
I am not given to superstition or believing in “unnecessary entities” but perhaps the term “dream” is a little too bland to do justice to the ultra-realism of these experiences. For instance, if one “dreams,” as I have, in rich tactile and auditory imagery of being examined in the dark by robots or operated upon by small beings whose good will and competence may be in doubt, or abused in various ways by life-forms not known to terrestrial biology, it can be very difficult to keep still. I have found that if I do not keep still this peculiar state of consciousness usually evaporates in a moment. That can be very useful as an escape route but it can be annoying to lose it when the success rate is not high and each attempt takes two hours or more. I like to regard myself as at least a moderately intrepid investigator, but I have to admit that in spite of being intellectually of the opinion that what was happening was only internally generated imagery, I have flinched during these episodes on more than one occasion I suspect that many “UFO abduction” experiences, as well as out-of-body-experiences are examples of the same kind of thing.
Let me reiterate that the felt reality of these experiences, be they OBE, NDE, or UFO abduction, is profound and should not be understated. Because of it a relatively unsophisticated observer, which probably includes most of us, often concludes that such experiences are “real” in the sense of consensual waking reality. Only in the case of the lucid dream does the experience feel real while we experience it even though we are fully aware at the time that it is not “real.” Thus I would argue that lucid dreaming represents a breakthrough for these types of experiences, in the sense of “waking up” called for in the meditative traditions. Further, this “waking up” represented by lucidity in sleep is only a transition or beginning point to higher states of consciousness and especially to pure consciousness. This state of “pure” consciousness occasionally occurs spontaneously, that is, without mental preparation, as in the NDE case of Block. However, more commonly the practice of meditation allows a reliable and integrated access.
But why, you might ask, should we want to train ourselves to pure consciousness? As Wallace (1986) explains:
Contemporary physiology over the last three hundred years has come to the basic understanding that life and consciousness evolved from matter and energy. The property of consciousness, in particular, is considered by many to be an epiphenomenon of living systems—that is, property which occurs as a by-product of the functioning of a complex nervous system In the Vedic perspective of physiology, as brought to light by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the understanding and experience are quite the opposite. Consciousness is not an epiphenomenon; rather, consciousness is the primary reality from which matter and life emerge.
In other words, by going to pure consciousness we go to the source of all being, of all experience whether ordinary or extraordinary. I will now track our way to pure consciousness via the lucid dreaming–meditation link.

Lucidity–Meditation Link

Hunt (1989) warns that the lucid dreams are not reducible to only a mental waking up unique to the sleep state. First the “conscious” faculties brought forth are only partial. Second although spontaneously occurring lucid dreams in normal populations are quite realistic relative to nonlucid dreams, in more sophisticated experients, such as long term meditators, bizarreness reasserts in unique ways. According to Hunt, “lucid dreaming is not merely (or even primarily) the intellectual awareness that one is dreaming (‘Am I? Oh well, I guess so. Isn’t that quaint?’).” The “realism” often spoken of as associated with lucidity is not only of the real life type but also “real, clear and somehow present” reminiscent, according to Hunt, of the peak experiences described by Maslow (1962).
The facility for self-reflectiveness, of recognizing self in the midst of a dream says Hunt (1989), is strikingly similar to the development of self-reflective consciousness in “mindfulness” or “insight” meditative traditions such as Zen, Theravada and Tibetan Buddhism. Furthermore, according to Alexander (1987) it is developmentally prior to obtaining the witness set sought in Transcendental Meditation. Especially in meditation and lucid dreaming (and it can be argued in the OBE, NDE and UFO abductions), once a detached but receptive attitude has been integrated into the waking or dreaming consciousness, strong feelings of exhilaration, freedom and release occur. There is, Hunt explains, “an unusually broad sense of context and perspective, a ‘balance’ of normally contradictory attitudes, and the felt sense of one’s own existence (that especial ‘I am’ or ‘being’ experience. . .).”
Without this heightened sense, most of us become consumed by everyday living, untouched by the “awe” of life and the stark inevitability of death. This, explains Hunt, is “the full human context to which on rare occasions we spontaneously ‘wake up.’” In the same way we remain unaware that we are dreaming, until the moment we turn lucid. Both moments of awareness “can have quite an impact,” Hunt says. But both are also frequently short-lived.
The theoretical and empirical association of lucid dreaming to the practice of meditation was first identified by Hunt (1989) and has been further developed by Gackenbach and Bosveld (summarized in 1989). From virtually every level of analysis, parallels, and in some cases potential causal agents, can be identified supporting the association of dream lucidity to the practice of meditation and thus on to theexperience of pure consciousness. There are also now several studies of meditators and lucid dreamers which reveal important psychological and physiological parallels.
Historically, lucid dreams are specifically spoken of in classic Tibetan Buddhist texts (for a review see Gillespie, 1988a) where lucidity is presented as a form of meditation available during dreaming. For a critical phenomenological discussion of this, see the papers of Gillespie (1988b; 1987a,b; 1986; 1985a,b,c,d,e,f,g) as well as books by Sparrow (1976a), Kelzer (1987), Garfield, (1976) and LaBerge (1985).

Psychological Parallels

Before I consider the specific phenomenological characteristics of dream lucidity relative to waking meditation, two points should be noted. First, the “eye of the beholder” phenomenon is apparent when analyzing these phenomena. That is, overall, dreamers reliably evaluate their lucid dreams as quite distinct from nonlucid ones whereas independent judges do not (Gackenbach, 1988). Secondly, the characteristics typically follow a developmental relationship with high impact occurring in both novice and sophisticated lucid dreamers and moderate to no impact in the mid-ranges. With bizarreness, Hunt and McLeod (1984) have argued that the nature of bizarreness in the lucid dreams of long term meditators is qualitatively distinct from bizarreness apparent in prelucid episodes of nonmeditators. This qualitative distinction is true with some but not all content categories (Gackenbach & Bosveld, 1989).
Regarding the visual nature of lucidity, more advanced practitioners as well as those who have had an initial exposure to lucidity report a rich visual quality that seems to stand out and sparkle (Green, 1968; Hunt, 1989). As with bizarreness, and consistent with the meditation model being proposed, this visual richness habituates with some exposure to lucidity, thus the lack of a difference in visual quality reported by Gackenbach (1988). Yet with long term exposure this same quality may reemerge particularly when associated with dream experiences of a transpersonal nature.
This is illustrated by Gillespie (1987a) who examines the range of experiences of light while lucid in dreams. He points out that light moves from ordinary dream light, which has the same visual quality as ordinary dreams, through unique experiences of light—like disks, or patterns of light such as “versions of lattices, lines, dots and colors constantly changing”—to the “fullness of light.” The latter he notes is overwhelming in its brilliance and transpersonal in his felt interpretation. “The fullness of light is accompanied by intense spontaneous feelings of joy and devotion.”
Many of the individual difference variables associated with the practice of meditation have also been found to be true of individuals who frequently dream lucidly while controlling for dream recall frequency. These include field independence (lucidity: Gackenbach, Heilman, Boyt & LaBerge, 1985; meditation: Pelletier, 1974; Jedrczak, 1984), creativity (lucidity: Gackenbach, Curren, LaBerge, Davidson, & Maxwell, 1983; meditation: Orme-Johnson & Haynes, 1981); lower anxiety (lucidity: Gackenbach et al., 1983; meditation: Alexander, 1982); absorption (lucidity: Gackenbach, Cranson & Alexander, 1986; meditation: Alexander, 1978; 1982); and private self-consciousness (lucidity: Gackenbach, et al., 1983; meditation, West, 1982). The meditation findings are reviewed in Alexander, Boyer and Alexander, 1987 while lucid dream findings are reviewed in Snyder and Gackenbach, 1988. A strong finding in both the lucidity (for review see Snyder & Gackenbach, 1988) and meditation (Reed, 1978; Faber, Saayman & Touyz, 1978) literatures is that both are associated with enhanced dream recall despite decreases in REM time as the result of meditation (Banquet & Sailhan, 1976; Becker & Herter, 1973; Meirsman, 1989).
Finally, and particularly noteworthy, is that the waking practice of meditation increases the frequency of experiencing lucidity in dreams (Sparrow, 1976b; Reed, 1978; Hunt & McLeod, 1984) even when dream recall differences are controlled (Gackenbach et al., 1986; 1989). Further, reports of consciousness during deep sleep are related to clear experiences of transcending during meditation (reported in Alexander, Boyer & Alexander, 1987) as well as to breath suspension during meditation. The latter is thought to be a key physiological indicate of the experience of “pure” consciousness (Kesterson, 1985).

Physiological Parallels

Physiological parallels between lucidity and meditation also exist. Except for the fact that the individual is awake, the depth of somatic arousal during meditation is equivalent to that of light sleep (Kesterson, 1985) but is not the same as light sleep (West, 1980). However, REM sleep shows increases in oxygen consumption and heart rate over Stages 1 and 2 NREM and lucid REM is significantly higher on these dimensions than nonlucid REM (LaBerge, Levitan, & Dement, 1986; LaBerge, 1985; 1988). This lucid somatic arousal would seem to argue against the lucid dreaming–meditation parallel. LaBerge (personal communication, June, 1987) has pointed out that the continued somatic arousal which he has found after the required eye movement signal could be an artifact of demand characteristics. That is, his subjects are typically told to signal when they know they are dreaming and then to do a predesigned task; active engagement in a dream task with consciousness could keep the system somatically aroused.
A study by Gackenbach, Moorecroft, Alexander and LaBerge (1987) sheds some light on this apparent discrepancy. They had a long term meditator who during meditation showed physiological signs of transcending that correlated with his self reports. This individual claimed that he was conscious of his true state throughout his sleep cycle. That is, he knew he was sleeping and sometimes dreaming during the entire night. The stabilization of this ability, called witnessing sleep, is thought to be a result of the regular practice of meditation (Alexander, Boyer & Orme-Johnson, 1985). In the sleep laboratory this meditator was able to signal with pre-arranged eye movements that he knew he was dreaming/sleeping during REM, Stage 1 and Stage 2 sleep. Interestingly, and in line with the present hypothesis, he showed physiological arousal around the eye movement signal but contrary to the data of LaBerge et al. (1986) he rapidly returned to quiet somatic levels shortly thereafter. With at least this one subject, signaling was somatically arousing but his self-reported continued consciousness in sleep was not. This study tentatively confirms that as lucid dreaming unfolds into witnessing dreaming, somatic arousal decreases and the equation of consciousness in sleep with states desired by the practice of meditation becomes firmer.
Further supporting the meditation-lucidity link is a finding with the “Hoffman” or “H”-reflex, an electrically evoked monosynaptic spinal reflex which has been viewed as an indicator of the flexibility of central nervous system response. Brylowski (1986) found greater H-reflex suppression associated with lucid REM sleep than with nonlucid REM sleep. H-reflex suppression is thought to be a key indicator of the presence of the REM state of sleep, as one is paralyzed from the neck down. This type of body paralysis does not occur during any other time of the sleep cycle, nor while awake. This finding is conceptually in line with studies by Dillbeck, Orme-Johnson, and Wallace (1981) and Haynes, Hebert, Reber & Orme-Johnson (1976). Dillbeck et al. found greater H-reflex recovery indirectly associated with an advanced form of meditation practice while Haynes et al. note positive correlations between H-reflex recovery and clarity of experience of the transcendental state while meditating. Enhanced H-reflex suppression in REM and recovery in waking both indicate a nervous system which is functioning maximally in accord with the needs of the state of organism.
A physiological individual difference variable further supports the lucidity– meditation link. Based on our work with lucid dreamer type differences in vestibular sensitivity we (Snyder & Gackenbach, 1991) hypothesized that REM sleep, especially lucid REM sleep, might be best characterized as internalizing of attention. Meditation has most often been conceptualized as a technique for internalizing attention.
The EEG work with dream lucidity is unfortunately fairly limited at this point in time [Editor’s Note: June, 1989] with the bulk having been done by Ogilvie, Hunt and associates (Ogilvie, Hunt, Sawicki & McGowan, 1978; Ogilvie, Hunt, Tyson, Lucescu & Jeakins, 1982; Tyson, Ogilvie & Hunt, 1984; Ogilvie, Vieira & Small, 1988; Hunt & Ogilvie, 1988). In this series of studies they sought to demonstrate the lucidity–meditation connection by examining alpha waves in lucid and nonlucid REM. Reviews of the EEG and meditation literature have fairly consistently pointed to the association of alpha with meditation (West, 1980; Taneli & Krahne, 1987; Wallace, 1986). The Ogilvie and Hunt group found, consistent with the meditation literature, variations in alpha as a function of stage of lucidity. Specifically, they found increased alpha in prelucid REM periods and early in lucidity and have likened this to the access phases of waking mediation. Similarly, West (1980) and Taneli and Krahne (1987) have summarized the EEG and meditation literature for power measures and note changes as a function of stage of meditation. Both reviewers agree that at the beginning and at the end of meditation, increases in alpha are observed. Later theta occurs, often intermixed with alpha, and at the “transcending” or “samadhi” phase, bursts of beta occur.
West (1980) has pointed out that a more sophisticated examination of EEG changes in meditation should include the investigation of EEG coherence (COH). The relationship of this variable to meditation has been investigated in the Transcendental Meditation research literature (for a review see Orme-Johnson, Wallace, Dillbeck, Alexander & Ball, in press; Wallace, 1986) and offers a unique potential for identifying EEG associations to types of consciousness during sleep—as extended alpha or beta bursts would mitigate against sleep.
REM has been identified as interhemispherically coherent in the theta range relative to NREM, thus making it the state in which meditation-like experiences (including lucidity) would be most likely to occur. Several investigators have shown that lucidity primarily emerges out of REM (see LaBerge, 1988, for a review). For a theoretical review of the coherence literature in meditation and sleep and its relationship to REM sleep consciousness see Gackenbach, in press.
Armitage, Hoffman and Moffitt (in press) report that high dream recallers show a greater continuity of rhythmic EEG (in a measure conceptually similar to EEG coherence) in transition from sleep to waking. Thus individuals who frequently remember their dreams are accessing information from a coherent state of brain functioning by remaining in some sense in that state. One of the most robust findings in both the individual difference (Snyder & Gackenbach, 1988) and content analysis (Gackenbach, 1988) literature on dream lucidity is the association of high dream recall to lucidity. Lucid dreamers in general are high dream recallers so they should show more COH at the state transition to waking.
But will lucid dreams themselves be higher in COH? In Gackenbach’s (1988) work with self evaluations of the recallability of lucid versus nonlucid dreams, the former are continually perceived as significantly easier to remember. Although one might argue that the phasic nature of lucid dreams might be responsible for their increased recallability, Pivik (1978) points out that dreams recalled from phasic versus tonic REM do not differ in recall. Indeed the “tonic” consciousness of the dreams reported by Gackenbach et al. were rated as highly recallable by the subject, if phenomenologically quiet(Gackenbach & Moorecroft, 1987).
Most directly, in pilot data LaBerge looked at EEG coherence twice. In his dissertation (LaBerge, 1980) he had only central EEG leads and found no COH differences as a function of lucidity. More recently (LaBerge, personal communication, June, 1988), he compared a five-minute lucid dream during REM to the 15 minutes of REM prior to the onset of dream consciousness in one subject. Looking at the interhemispheric EEG coherence measured at the parietal lobes, he found an increase in COH in the parietal lobes. This is interesting as the central role of visual-spatial functioning, associated with this area of the brain, has been strongly implicated in the work of Gackenbach’s group for both lucid dreamers (Snyder & Gackenbach, 1988) and lucid dreams (Gackenbach, 1988). Further, this was the location of inter-hemispheric alpha COH reported by O’Connor and Shaw for field independent individuals, a perceptual style characteristic of high dream recallers, lucid dreamers, and meditators.
Clearly on several levels of analyses, dream lucidity parallels waking meditation. Although lucidity can and does emerge spontaneously in nonmeditating populations, the average frequency of such experiences is considerably less than in meditating adults (Gackenbach, Cranson & Alexander, 1986; 1989).

What is Meditation? A Technique to Access Pure Consciousness

If lucid dreaming is a form of meditation and/or the result of meditation, the question is, “What is meditation?” For the past two decades, as western scientists have been addressing the question of meditation, several models have been emerging. Most frequently cited is meditation as a stress reducing mechanism. Often pointed to are meditation as a form of psychotherapy, as enhanced self awareness, as a finely held hypnagogic state or as a form of self hypnosis. More recent models focus on meditation as an attention-enhancing procedure. (For a recent review of the meditation literature see Murphy & Donovan, 1988.)
But these models do not answer the “what is meditation” question. They only describe what it does; that is what the potential products of its practice are. All of these “takes” on meditation really miss the essential point. Meditation is a procedure, a technology, a method and as such it is not causal; rather it facilitates outcomes, such as stress reduction and consciousness during sleep. These outcomes are a natural part of the biological and psychological systems but the application of the “technology” of meditation increases the likelihood of attaining them.
These perspectives on meditation are reductionistic. Such reducing to the common denominator is the meat of the scientific method, but it can also strike a death toll for complex, holistic procedures designed to work with the entire self system. Reductionism, when investigating a complex phenomenon such as meditation, strips it of its full meaning and potential. As Deikman (1982) recently noted:
Ironically, although the power of meditation to affect physiological and psychological functions has been substantiated in many different laboratories, we have paid little attention to what the originators of meditation have said about its intended purpose and the requirements for its appropriated use Focusing primarily on the experiences and bodily effects of meditation is like collecting oyster shells and discarding the pearls. Such ‘spiritual materialism’ inevitably interferes with the real potential of meditation.
If meditation is somehow more than its component parts or products, what is it? Virtually all systems of meditation contextualize the procedure in some way, making it part of a spiritual path—a seeking—for union with the higher self-God-nature. Here I will focus on one of these systems because it is not onlycomprehensive but is the most empirically supported theoretical position. It comes from the founder of the largest meditation group in the West, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
The Maharishi conceptualizes meditation as a tool for the development of consciousness. In other words meditation, in this case Transcendental Meditation, is a technique which serves to enliven an individual’s experience of the common denominator of being, pure consciousness. Pure consciousness, according to Alexander, Chandler, and Boyer (1989), is “described as a silent state of inner wakefulness with no object of thought or perception.” Furthermore, they note that “pure consciousness is conditioned not by cultural or intellectual conditions, but by fundamental psychophysiological conditions which are universally available across cultures.”
Alexander et al. offer several descriptions of pure consciousness. For instance:
After about two years, my experience of the transcendent started to become clearer. At that time, I would settle down, it would be very quiet . . . and then I would transcend, and there would just be a sort of complete silence, void of content. The whole awareness would turn in, and there would be no thought, no activity, and no perception, yet it was somehow comforting. It was just there and I could know when I was in it. There wasn’t a great “Oh, I am experiencing this,” it was very natural and innocent. But I did not yet identify myself with this silent content-free inner-space. It was a self-contained entity that I transcended to and experienced.
Alexander et al. reviewed the empirical correlates of the experience of pure consciousness. Physiological correlates of this “subjective” experience during meditation include: attainment of a deep state of physiologic rest during this experience is indicated by significant reductions, relative to simply relaxing with eyes closed,in minute ventilation, forearm muscle O2 consumption and CO2 elimination, red blood cell metabolism, plasma lactate, plasma cortisol, and thyroid stimulating hormone; and significant comparative increases in basal skin resistance, plasma prolactin, and serotonergic turnover. On the other hand, simultaneous enhancement of alertness associated with experience of pure consciousness during TM practice is suggested by a more efficient auditory evoked potential response, faster H-reflex recovery, increased blood flow to the brain, and higher levels of plasma arginine vasopressin (associated with enhanced learning and memory) in comparison to control subjects simply sitting and relaxing with eyes closed.
Two physiological variables are markers of experiencing pure consciousness: breath suspension and enhanced EEG coherence. These two, these scientists explain, “were the immediate correlates of specific subperiods of reported experience of pure consciousness, indicated by button press, and were greater than those occurring during the remainder of TM practice.”
As for behavioral effects they note that “exhaustive meta-analyses of over 100 separate studies indicate that repeated experience of pure consciousness during TM produces significantly greater reductions in trait anxiety, depression, hostility and other symptoms of mental stress than simple or stylized forms of relaxation.” Further “regular experience of consciousness during TM is associated with development of personal identity as operationalized by improvement on such measures as self-actualization, self-concept, self-esteem and field independence” including ego development. They summarize,
Whereas deep sleep is characterized by physiologic rest (e.g., a decrease in several metabolic functions) and ordinary wakefulness by alertness (e.g., faster H-reflex recovery response), pure consciousness is characterized by both co-existing in a simple unified state.
By way of methodological refinement Alexander et al. point out that:
Although experience of pure consciousness occurs with far less frequency in the general population, our research (and that of other researchers) indicates that its behavioural correlates are similar even among subjects who have received no exposure to meditation or the concept of pure consciousness.
They conclude:
This enables us to go beyond the prevailing understanding of pure consciousness as an inaccessible, ineffable or “mystical” experience. Rather, we come to realize that the experience of pure consciousness is a natural consequence of unfolding the latent potential of human consciousness to fully know itself, that has profound utility for improving the quality of human life.
Access to pure consciousness due to the purification of the nervous system in response to the regular practice of meditation is exemplified in the development of a “passive witness,” a silently observing part of the self that witnesses all other states of consciousness (waking, sleeping, and dreaming) without trying to change them. A male long term TM meditator describes witnessing dreamless sleep:
It is a feeling of infinite expansion and bliss and nothing else. Then I become aware that I exist but there is no individual personality then I become aware that I am individual but no details of who, where, what, when, etc. Eventually these details fill in and I might come awake.
or
How do you describe an unmanifest experience? It has only happened a half dozen times in 15 years, but when it occurs, its crystal clear. [It is] like an amplifier turned on, but no sound. The experience fades as boundaries of dreams or waking state gather, gain definition and overshadow.
While witnessing dreaming sleep is described, “I watch it as it is going on separate from me There are parts, me and the dream, two different realities.”

Lucidity–Witnessing Relationship

With the formal operational dreams of adults, differing degrees of self-awareness are evident prior to its full emergence in lucidity. Moffitt et al. (1986), based on the work of Rossi (1972), designed a nine-point scale culminating in lucidity. At the lowest level on their Self-Reflectiveness Scale the dreamer is not in the dream. This moves to Level 3 where the dreamer is completely involved in the dream then at Level 5 the dreamer thinks over an idea. At Level 7 the dreamer has multiple levels of awareness simultaneously participating and observing. Finally, at Level 9 the dreamer consciously reflects on the fact that he is dreaming.
But I have argued (Gackenbach, 1991) that lucidity is only the beginning and that consciousness in sleep, when it arises as part of the natural growth cycle, is both psychologically and biologically a developmentally advanced form of dreaming. This is in line with current cognitive perspectives of sleep mentation. Foulkes (1982) argues that the development of mentation in sleep parallels that during waking so that dreams of young children are preoperational whereas those of adults range from concrete to formal operations. Furthermore, cognitive models of sleep mentation stress the continuity of waking-type mentation into sleep (Foulkes, 1985). Recent theorists in developmental (Alexander & Langer, 1989) as well as transpersonal psychology (Wilber, 1987) have postulated stages of developmental beyond the traditional Piagetian endpoint of formal operations. Alexander, Davies, Dixon, Dillbeck, Oetzel, Muehlman, and Orme-Johnson (1989), in characterizing one such stage, maintain that “the Self becomes de-embedded from and hierarchically integrates (‘witnesses’) all previous, representational levels of mind” (p. 33), including dreaming. In other words, consciousness in sleep, orthe lucid dream, is an early manifestation of postformal operational functioning in sleep.

Physiological Analysis of the Lucidity–Witnessing Relationship

I shall first consider the relationship of meditation to REM sleep on a physiological level of analysis. Meirsman (1989) studied six advanced TM meditators (TM-Sidhi techniques) who reported witnessing sleep on the average of half the night. He argued that the practice of the TM-Sidhis results in the “maintenance of . . . alertness even during the inertia of deep night sleep” and that further “‘witnessing’ of one’s own sleep during the night seems to be the subjective experience of a physiologically more efficient (REM) sleep.” Meirsman examined the incidence of an eye movement ratio (high frequency REMs/low frequency REMs [HF/LF]) from uninterrupted REM sleep (no prearranged eye movement signals were required). HF/LF had been shown to be “associated with cerebral maturation (age, second half of ovulatory cycle, second half of pregnancy).” Meirsman points out that this measure can be “defined as the capacity of the brain to structure ‘order’ from the ‘noisy stream’ of information.” This researcher found that the REM sleep of the meditators who were conscious during it was more order-creating (higher HF/LF ratios) than that of the “unconscious” nonmeditators. He describes this as “a reflection of the higher intensity of the assimilation of information in the brain during REM sleep.” This finding was further supported by the shorter REM sleep time among the meditators in his study when compared to his controls.
Unfortunately, meditation practice in this study is confounded with reports of witnessing. According to the teachings of this meditation practice, a result of the practice will be sleep consciousness. Although spontaneous occurrences at this frequency (half the night or more) may occur, they are so rare as to be virtually non-existent, whereas Gackenbach, Cranson and Alexander (1987; 1989) have shown that such high rates are not infrequent in groups of TM meditators. Thus it may be nearly impossible to separate sleep consciousness at this rate from the practice of meditation.
I will now fold the Meirsman study back onto the physiological analysis of lucid dreaming reviewed earlier. The most reliable physiological finding in the lucid dreaming literature is the association of high REM density to the lucid state in REM. Likewise, Meirsman reported that the total REM density regardless of frequency, was also significantly higher for the TM-Sidhi group when compared to controls. LaBerge (personal communication, March, 1989) compared the REM density of twelve lucid dreamers to that of Meirsman’s six meditators. Although the means were the same, variability among the lucid dreamers was quite high whereas it was virtually nonexistent among the meditators. In other words, both lucidity and witnessing (as a product of meditation) evidence the same increase in REM density, but the meditators were more stable, on the physiological level of analysis, in their experience.
Further in terms of the work of the Ogilvie and Hunt group who reported alpha in prelucid and early lucid episodes, so too Meirsman reports a large amplitude and lower frequency of alpha activity as associated with a higher HF/LF ratio and thus witnessing sleep. LaBerge (1985) to find this alpha presence as did Ogilvie et al. (1988). However, in both cases the failure was associated with the disruption of REM sleep by the eye movement signal. When no signal was demanded or before a signal it seems that alpha is associated with consciousness in sleep of both the lucid and witnessing varieties.
I cannot say if Meirsman’s subjects also evidenced more somatic arousal (respiration and heart rate) as has been shown with LaBerge’s lucid dreaming subjects. The single witnessing and signalling subject of Gackenbach et al. provides mixed data. On the one hand he was somatically less aroused but on the other hand his eye movement density was significantly less than two lucid dreamers who did not signal in thelab. Furthermore, when his heart rate, respiration and eye movement density were compared for pre- and post-eye movement signal differences, we found no significant pre-post signal differences. Eye movement density went up after the signal while respiration went down which would be indicates of the classic restful alertness claimed to occur as a result of the practice of TM.
Work on physiological associations of these states of consciousness in sleep is just beginning but early data show some physiological similarities. Thus delineating the association of lucidity to witnessing consciousness in sleep becomes important. Some understanding of this relationship can be found on a psychological or phenomenological level of analysis.

Psychological Analysis of the Lucidity–Witnessing Relationship

Gackenbach, Cranson and Alexander (1987; 1989) have conducted several studies examining the relationship of dream lucidity to pure consciousness. The latter as expressed in the witness set during dreaming or dreamless sleep. They found, as predicted by the Alexander (1987) model, that although meditators reported experiencing more of all three types of sleep consciousness experiences (i.e., lucid dreaming, witnessing dreaming and witnessing dreamless sleep), across samples, lucid dreams were experienced more frequently than either witnessing dreaming or witnessing deep sleep. This finding favoring the higher incidence of lucidity relative to witnessing also held across level of dream recall. It supports the notion that lucid dreams are easier to access no matter what one’s training or personal skills and that therefore they may represent a developmentally prior state of sleep consciousness leading eventually to the experience of pure consciousness.
As reported by Alexander (1988), in order to examine differences between these three forms of sleep consciousness, this group of researchers did content analyses on sleep experience reports collected from 66 males who were very advanced in their TM meditation. In fact, they could be characterized as TM monks, as they have devoted their lives to their meditation practice. These were selected because it was believed that their training better equipped them as a group to be able to distinguish these subtle states of mind in sleep. This assumption was somewhat validated when it was determined that only 17% of the 66 subjects’ lucid dreaming reports could not be used because they were either blank or questionable. This is compared to the Rusual loss of about 50% of nonmeditating subjects for the same reasons reported in Gackenbach’s work (for a review see Snyder and Gackenbach, 1988).1
Nine content categories were then developed based on a reading of the reports with the first seven scored for presence or absence of the quality in the description:

1. Sleep/wake/dream state transition;

2. References to real physical body;

3. Dream body flying;

4. Dream body running;

5. “Lightness” of experience;

6. Control of the experience;

7. Sense of a feeling of separateness;

8. Emotions (extreme positive, positive, negative, no reference) and

9. Trigger for consciousness (none mentioned, just knew, oddity, and anxiety).

The 55 lucid dreaming descriptions, 41 witnessing dreaming descriptions, and 47 witnessing deep sleep descriptions were characterized in the main by different components although a continuity between states could also be seen. Most revealing of these categories was the one on feelings of separateness. In only 7 percent of the lucid dream cases did people report feeling separateness, whereas 73 percent of the witnessing dream cases spontaneously reported that the dream went on, but they were separate from it. These reports are consistent with Alexander and colleagues conceptual descriptions of witnessing as involving the complete differentiation of pure consciousness from the dream state. In other words the silent witness functions as completely distinct from or outside of the dreaming state.
Another interesting category is that of emotion. There were positive emotions associated with all three states, but extremely positive emotions, described most often as “bliss,” were reported more frequently for witnessing dreaming and witnessing deep sleep. This was also true for feelings of lightness.
On the other hand, dream control was much more frequent during lucid dreaming experiences (47%) than during witnessing dreams (5%). This finding is consistent with the claims that dream lucidity typically involves active information processes and manipulation of dream content. The “will” or volitional capacity of the individual ego can act on its thoughts and desires. This is in contrast to the experience of pure consciousness, which is said to be one of complete inner fulfillment or contentment. The Self does not act, but silently observes the changes occurring within waking, dreaming, and sleep.
Also, over half the lucid dreams were triggered by mental events in the dreams that appeared to stimulate or awaken intellectual or discriminative processes typical of the waking state. On the other hand, witnessing dreaming and sleep were virtually never triggered by such mental events. The most unambiguous criterion of witnessing is maintenance of pure consciousness even during deep sleep. Because lucidity involves active thinking and deep sleep is generally, although not always, without mentation, it is not surprising that lucidity (as typically experienced) drops out during deep sleep. However, after long-term practice, TM practitioners gradually begin to report experiences of “witnessing,” or maintenance of pure consciousness, even during dreamless sleep.
Although each form of sleep consciousness was, in general, differentially characterized, there were some characteristics which weren’t so individual. For instance, as previously mentioned, all were emotionally positive. Also, in both lucid dreaming (11%) and witnessing dreaming (12%), experiences of flying were reported. Likewise state transitions were mentioned in both lucidity (20%) and witnessing deep sleep (55%) but rarely in witnessing dreaming (2%). Finally, although it was rare (7%), feelings of separation were on occasion mentioned in the lucid dreaming reports of this group of elite TM meditators.
The work of Gackenbach, Cranson and Alexander supports the notion that these three states of consciousness in sleep are qualitatively distinct but nonetheless probably exist along a developmental continuum, with lucid dreaming emerging prior to witnessing dreaming. This view is endorsed by practitioners who make comments likening witnessing dreaming to “a clearer experience of . . . [lucid dreaming]. The sense of self is more full and transcends the dream completely. It is large Self.”
Alexander (1988) explains that:
The significance of the experience of pure consciousness is that it provides the foundation for the development of stable higher stages of consciousness or “enlightenment.” Witnessing of deep sleep indicates that the inner wakefulness of pure consciousness is now beginning to be maintained even during the most extreme conditions of mental inertia—dreamless sleep. Indeed . . . the first stable higher stage of consciousness termed “cosmic consciousness”—is defined as the maintenance of pure consciousness throughout the 24-hour cycle of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.

A Potential Stage Model for the Lucidity–Witnessing Relationship

A descriptive level of analysis comes from interviews Gackenbach (Gackenbach, 1991; Gackenbach & Bosveld, 1989) has conducted with several long term TM meditators. From an especially clear individual, five basic stages were delineated in the movement from lucidity to witnessing. These stages were further illuminated by comments from a meditating petroleum engineer and a Sanskrit scholar who is not a TM meditator. In order to understand these stages one must think of the progression, at least in part, as the dreamer shifts from being an “actor” in the dream to the “observer” of it.

Stage One: Initially in lucid dreaming, the actor is dominant. The only role the observer plays is to recognize, however briefly, that the self is dreaming. Despite this recognition, the feeling is still that the dream is “out there” and that the self is “in here.” As the dreamer becomes more familiar with lucidity, it may occur to him/her that he/she can manipulate the dream. In this form of lucid dreaming, the meditator comments, one has
this clear degree of wakefulness inside, but still one is tied into the figures of the dream. It’s a matter of accent . . . it’s more that you’re an object in the dream and less so that you are a witness to that dream.

Stage Two: At some point it may occur to the dreamer that what is “out there” is actually “inside.” At this point two paths seem open to the dreamer: The dreamer may either become actively engaged in the dream events all the while recognizing that it is the self as well as the dream ego that is involved; or, shift his/her attention to the “inside I,” allowing the “outside I”—the dream scene—to fade. The meditator comments, “the predominance is on the observer; the action, the observation I don’t really much care about; in fact I don’t really remember many of those with content “ The petroleum engineer from Canada remarks that during these preliminary stages one flips easily back and forth between witnessing the dream with a quiet detachment to being lucid in the dream, in the latter case aware of the dream but also caught up in its activity. A graduate student in Sanskrit writes,
There is little in lucidity itself that will disrupt the production of dream images and sense effects. But because I know I am dreaming, I can proceed to do things that I would not do in ordinary dreams, and it is these actions or non-actions that disrupt the dreaming process. My interaction with the dream keeps it going normally. If I become passive, by stopping to watch what happens, or just to try to think of something, the activity in the dream environment diminishes or stops altogether.

Stage Three: Lucid dreams in this stage tend to be short. The meditator describes it as a thought that arises which you take note of and then let go. He says,
The action of the dream is not dominant. It does not grip you so that you are identified with it as opposed to the first step in which the focus was more on the active [participation]. In this case it’s just a state of inner awareness that’s really dominant. Awareness is there very strongly. The dream is a little dust flying about so to speak.
This is, he says, analogous to when “I’m just sitting while awake and doing nothing and thoughts pop up, like an involuntary knee jerk. I’m not caught up [in the dream] there isn’t much intensity to them.” The scholar explains that the meditator in sleep, “knows that he is not to interact with or be tempted by anything that may happen phenomenally. He is not to desire or anticipate anything.”

Stage Four: In this stage an “inner wakefulness” dominates. “You don’t have dreams or in any case you don’t remember having dreams,” says the meditator. You are absorbed not in dreams, but in the witness. This sort of sleep awareness can be so continuous that one may go for months without recalling a dream; one loses awareness even of the passage of time. This might be said to be dreamless sleep with awareness, or, as the scholar notes:
When all waking and dream imagery and all mental content are eliminated, there is dreamless sleep. Each night, I, the dreamer, move into dreamless sleep. Here I desire not desire and see no dream. There is only an ocean of objectless consciousness. The inner Self still sees, because the Self is imperishable, but there is nothing distinct from it to see. Likewise there is not second thing from the Self for the Self to smell, taste, speak, hear, think, touch, or discern. The Self is conscious of nothing within or without. This is the home base from which the Self moves out into dream and waking image and thought, the home to which the self, like a tired bird, returns from waking and dream experience to rest.
At this point it is very difficult to distinguish further stages but the clear meditator seems to go further.

Stage Five: Once the dreamer has moved into this transcendental state or pure consciousness, she/he moves into the experience. Now the “dream” will characteristically take symbolic forms not generally found in nonlucid or lucid dreams of an earlier stage: They will be much more abstract and have no sensory aspects to them, no mental images, nor emotional feelings, no sense of body or space. There is a quality of unboundedness to them. “One experiences oneself to be a part of a tremendous composite of relationships,” the professor explains. These are not social or conceptual or intellectual relationships, only “a web of relationships. I am aware of the relationship between entities without the entities being there.” He says there is “a sense of motion yet there are no relative things to gauge motion by, it’s just expansiveness. There are no objects to measure it. The expansiveness is one of light—like the light of awareness.”1
The case in the June, 1989 issue of Lucidity Letter of Anja Savolainen points out that the smooth sequence taking one from lucidity to witnessing may not be true for everyone. In her experience she had to let go of lucidity, move through nonlucidity before she developed the witness set in sleep. This points out that although there is a relationship between these states of consciousness in sleep, the exact nature of it may vary considerably from individual to individual.
The development of these capacities of consciousness lies at the root of many meditative traditions. Not surprisingly, some traditions view lucid dreaming as a form of sleeping meditation, a necessary precursor to the development of the witness. Hunt points out that in Tibetan Buddhism once a disciple has “attained a relatively stable dream lucidity, he [or she] may practice confronting fearsome deities or use the opportunity to deepen his [or her] meditative absorption in preparation for ‘lucidity’ during Bardo.”
Could the contemporary form of “fearsome deities” be aliens?

Back to the OBE, NDE, and UFO Abductions

In this paper I started with descriptions of three experiences, OBEs, NDEs, and UFO abductions, and argued that these are generally inaccurate (although strong) in felt reality-attributions of the state of the organism. Interestingly most, but not all, cases of these three types of experiences occur under circumstances of sensory deprivation (i.e. near or during sleep or near great physical trauma which is associated with unconsciousness) or during extreme sensory overload of either a physical or emotional type. These two extremes allow for a reorganization of the mental model of reality.
Although all of these experiences are associated with dream lucidity, they lack in the main the “waking up” inherent in lucidity. Not that it is not possible. One could have any of these experiences and attribute the state while it is ongoing to a restructuring of one’s mental model of reality. But more commonly the face value presentation of “reality” is accepted during the experience (i.e. “I am outside of my body” or “I have been abducted by aliens” or “I am dead”). It is the extremely sophisticated observer who, while in the throes of these experiences, can further de-embed from the experience and conclude that “although I appear in all sensory modalities to be on a space ship I am actually living fully while awake in an ‘imagined realm.’” Yet in sleep while we dream, such accurate attributions seem to be easier to arrive at.
After showing that these experiences of mind are related to lucidity to greater or lesser degrees, I then undertook to contextualize lucidity in terms of the meditative traditions and especially pure consciousness. With the concept of pure consciousness as the ground of reality, matter and energy emerging from it was also proposed. Thus phenomena as diverse as the physical reality of UFO experients to the other but real worldliness of the demonic in Father “X”‘s lucid dreams to the transcendence of beings of light when near death can all emerge from and yet collapse into the void of being.
The emphasis on a psychospiritual interpretation of these experiences is not new. The UFO abduction experience Jung (1964) originally saw as a sign of the end of an era. Grosso (1985b) and Ring (in press) both argue for a close association between the UFO abduction and the NDE experiences beyond the obvious link vis-ŕ-vis the OBE (both experients report OBEs associated with their experiences). Whereas Ring views both in the context of the shamanic journey, Grosso emphasizes them as characterizing a “collective psychospiritual process.” Furthermore, Grosso (1985a points out about the NDE that, “deeper layers of this remarkable experience seem to be phenomenologically similar to the mystical experience.” Likewise, Ring (in press) points out that the aftereffects of the UFO abduction, despite their grueling nature, are “often striking resemblances to those characteristic of NDEs.” Based on the extensive NDE literature Ring concludes that NDErs
. . . return with apparently enhanced psychic sensitivities; quite a few claim to have acquired healing gifts as a result of their NDE and most of them report an increased concern with the welfare of others and indeed with the welfare of all life on this planet.
By way of specific illustrations of the mystical, transcendent or pure consciousness potentials of these types of experiences, let’s turn to the three cases in the December, 1989 issue of Lucidity Letter. The Block case of consciousness in coma was, in its final “shelter,” a classic illustration of pure consciousness. Recently, Mindell (1989) has shown that many patients with metabolic coma, when revived, report experiences of ecstasy, prophetic insight and self-knowledge. As for the UFO abductee, Bill, Payne points out the many experiences of psychic or transcendent nature he has had, including OBEs, ESP, conversation with a loving being and consciousness in sleep. Finally, the demonic experiences of Father “X” certainly point to the realm of the transcendent if apparently, paradoxically so. Relatedly, Ring (in press) points out when comparing UFO abduction and NDE:
It is clear from the literature of abduction cases that the appearance and behavior of the cosmic shaman in UFOEs tend to be disturbing and indeed frightening to most of those who encounter him. This is in marked contrast, of course, to the loving and benign qualities of the cosmic shaman in NDEs. Once more, it seems, we have an antipodal relationship between these two categories of experience at the phenomenological level but one that again obscures an important functional similarity. The point here is this: it doesn’t matter what the cosmic shaman looks like or how he behaves. His function is simply to educate the soul. Whether he does this by acting out the role of the trickster, the masked demon or the sage is irrelevant. His ways are protean, but his objective is the same through a thousand disguises.
The OBE is important according to Grosso (1985b), “because it sheds light on the shamanic roots of religion.” He then goes on to argue that the separatist view of OBEs should not be taken literally because all perceptions of reality are out-of-body. In other words, we are always working from a mental model the difference is simply where “I” is placed, behind our eyeballs, in our elbow, or on the ceiling of the room. Grosso notes that “going out of the body is just ‘going’ more deeply into the mind.” Like Hunt, Grosso points to the OBE as another model of
creating psychical distance, becoming a spectator, becoming a witness—all these metaphors for spiritual discipline speak of methods of deflecting attention from the tasks of bodily survival. In place of these tasks, we are invited to raise anchor and sail forth into Mind at Large.

Ecstasy (Active) Versus Void (Passive) Perspectives

The active (sensory overload of OBE, NDE, or UFO abduction and ecstasy experiences of some lucid dreams)/passive (sensory deprivation of OBE, NDE, or UFO abduction and the witnessing/void experiences of sleep) distinction made earlier as potential determinants of each of the three types of experiences can also be applied within the lucid dream as well as to mystical states. In terms of lucid dreams Kelzer (1987) points to the devotional intensity available to the religious seeker in lucid dreams. In “The Gift of the Magi,” the “most powerful and astounding lucid dream” he has ever had, Kelzer dreamt a long detailed sequence of being one of the three wise men in search of the baby Jesus. At numerous points in this dream Kelzer had various mystical/religious experiences. For instance, when he reaches the Christ child in the dream he says that:
Suddenly I feel a tremendous rush of emotion within me, welling up from my stomach and chest so strongly that I burst into uncontrollable sobbing. I sob and sob and sob, heaving my chest for a long time as all of the feelings of the journey pour through me: extreme joy, relief, sadness over Herod, courage, determination and many other feelings.
Experiences of spiritual ecstasy as well as movement toward the void are both possible from the lucid dream state. The ecstasy experiences are like those of Kelzer in his “The Gift of the Magi” dream and an experience of the Void is manifest as an experience of pure consciousness in sleep. Gillespie (1988) has struggled with attempts to reach the state of “dreamless sleep,” consciousness with no content during sleep (pure consciousness), as spoken of in the classic Indian texts, the Upanishads. He notes that:
Dreamless sleep, according to the Upanishads, is the state in which the delusion of both waking and dreaming is eliminated. In dreamless sleep the experiencer desires no desire and sees no dream. He knows nothing from within or without, for there is no second thing for him to experience. Dreamless sleep is the state of nonduality, the experience of brahman, ultimate reality.
He has attempted to attain this state by systematically removing the content of his dreams while lucid. Of his first attempt he writes:
I closed my [dream] eyes. It became dark. I remained very much aware of sitting on a chair with my feet on the floor and leaning on the table. I wanted to remove these perceptions also. I pushed the table away, then raised my feet off the floor. I was hesitant to push the chair from under me. I willed the chair away. I remained with my legs raised and became unaware of the chair. I was first floating, then spinning, very much aware of my body. Charlotte came along and thought we should leave. So I got out of the chair.
Eventually, he was able to eliminate his awareness of all objects including his dream body. He notes:
I reached the point where nothing was left except my own consciousness in darkness, though I have no memory of maintaining that state. I was satisfied that I had reached the point of dreamless sleep, but I saw the state as literally only that—sleeping with no dreaming. I did not see the religious or philosophical meaning inherent in the experience.
This ecstasy/void distinction is also noted by Fisher (1971) for waking experiences. He conceptualized these as waking ergotropic versus trophotropic transpersonal states. Hyperaroused ergotropic states such as the peak ecstatic rapture experiences of the mystics fall at the top of a continuum of arousal states. The void of yoga samadhi is the peak hypoaroused (low arousal) type of trophotropic states. He points out that at these peaks, “the ‘Self’ of ecstasy and the ‘Self’ of samadhi are one and the same ‘Self.’” Specifically:
In spite of the mutually exclusive relation between the ergotropic and trophotropic systems, however, there is a phenomenon called “rebound to superactivity,” or trophotropic rebound, which occurs in response to intense sympathetic excitation, that is, at ecstasy, the peak of ergotropic arousal. A rebound into samadhi at this point can be conceived of as a physiological protective mechanism; Gellhorn was among the first to notice that the rebound of the trophotropic system is not confined to the autonomic branches, but also causes significant changes in behavior. Thus, repetitive stimulation of the reticular formation in the midbrain increases the arousal level in awake cats, but this phase is followed by one in which the animal yawns, lies down, and finally falls asleep. This rebound phase is associated with the appearance of theta potentials in the hippocampus, just as the corresponding human trophotropic rebound—samadhi—is characterized by theta potentials.
This “rebound” from ecstasy to void is illustrated in this sleep experience of Hewitt’s (1988):
In 1985 I began experimenting with meditation in lucid dreams in an effort to discover this depth. These experiments brought profound results. On a half dozen occasions I succeeded in remembering my intention to sit down in the dynamic atmosphere of the lucid dream, and managed to be undistracted by dream imagery long enough to practice deep, rhythmic breathing. In each case awareness seemed to expand into an egg-shaped sphere which encompassed my dream body, with a corresponding dramatic intensification of consciousness. As this happened, colors flowed like pools of neon light in my inner vision, as they sometimes do in meditation and before falling asleep. The state intensified until the dream imagery, through half-shut eyes, took on a diaphanous character and finally disappeared. I became a point of consciousness contentedly floating in an intense yellow-orange field of light.
Other behavioral scientists have also considered the nature of ecstasy versus the void. For instance, Goleman (1972) spoke of a “threefold typology of meditative techniques.” Based on the work of Claudio Naranjo, Goleman spoke of the first two as representing the two major forms of meditation, concentration and insight, which lead to meditation-specific states of consciousness and eventually the “void” or “pure consciousness.” The third technique, “The Expressive Way,” “includes visionary and prophetic experiences; possession states; artistic, shamanistic, and psychotherapeutic surrender; and openness to impulse and intuition. This category includes experiences from the domain of discursive thought and represents, according to Goleman, “a maximal expansion of normal consciousness into altered states, but do not overleap its bounds into the realm of jhana or nirvana, where discursive thought stops.” In contrast to Fisher’s concept of a “rebound” from ecstasy to void, Goleman argues that:
It may be, in fact, that the Expressive Way is inimical to the attainment of meditative specific states, since by acting out every impulse one may reinforce patterns of thought and desire, strengthening these habits of mind so as to enhance their power to hinder transcending the sphere of thought.
A third perspective is that of Hunt (personal communication, January, 1989) who explains that this “rebound” from ecstasy to the void as the “actual processes becoming invisible.” It’s similar, he says, to learning to talk. Initially the child is caught up in the sounds of words and how to make them but eventually such concerns habituate and the child’s focus is on the meaning of the words. Likewise, when a child initially learns to ride a bike she is caught up with the feel of the cycle and sensations associated with balancing. Eventually, she “gets it” and enjoys the thrill of a fast ride down a steep hill. Hunt points out that there are limits to sensate mysticism which sort of habituate out when we “get it”—experience pure consciousness. In other words, we focus on the content of the experience rather than its meaning. Although, as was pointed out earlier in this paper, once we pass the point of consciousness the experience “opens up” again but it is of such a profoundly different quality that equating it to experiences with sensory, emotional or intellectual content would be too reductionistic.
I have considered a range of experiences or states of consciousness which point to the very fragility of our hold on “reality” and tried to relate them to pure consciousness as a source point in not only mind but all matter and energy. As Chopra (1989) notes of the converging points of view of physics and mysticism:
The known world of our senses, of atoms and molecules, does not just break off abruptly; it shades imperceptibly into a different reality. At some point, however, one reality flips into another. Time and space acquire a different meaning; the neat divisions between inner and outer reality disappear.

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# Part V: Historical Perspectives

## Introduction

JAYNE GACKENBACH

Athabasca University and University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Many historically significant papers have appeared for the first time on the pages of Lucidity Letter. We have defined this section primarily as investigations of lucid dreaming prior to and including the first sleep laboratory studies by Hearne and Worsley in Great Britain and Stephen LaBerge in the United States. Their work was basically the turning point; an explosion of experimental, theoretical, and clinical work into lucid dreaming followed. Until the mid-1970’s individuals such as Marquis d’Hervey-Saint-Denys, Frederik van Eeden, Paul Tholey, Celia Green, and Patricia Garfield worked in virtual isolation in their considerations of this remarkable dream experience. Then with the groundbreaking work of Stephen LaBerge the “field” of lucid dreaming took off (see several papers in the Empirical Work section). Now there are numerous books out on the topic as well as a reference list that numbers well over 100 sources (see past issues of Lucidity Letter for all the bibliographic citations). Also included in this historical section is a series of three papers on the Senoi controversy.

##### V.1 An Historical View of Dreams and the Ways to Direct Them; Practical Observations by Marie-Jean-Leon Lecoq, le Marquis d’Hervey-Saint-Denys

C.M. DEN BLANKEN and E.J.G MEIJER

Utrecht, The Netherlands

In 1867, Librairie d’Amyot at Paris published a book entitled Les Ręves et les Moyens de les Diriger; Observations pratiques (trans.: Dreams and the Ways to Direct Them; Practical Observations.) Henceforth we will refer to it as Les Ręves. Originally the work appeared anonymously but eventually its authorship was attributed to the famous French scientist, le Marquis d’Hervey-Saint-Denys. With its publication, for the first time in Western history, a detailed personal report on lucid dreaming over a 32-year period was available. Among other things, in this book, Saint-Denys describes his interest in dreams from the age of thirteen, how he developed lucidity in them, and how he partially mastered the direction of his dreams.
Almost every book on lucid dreams refers to Saint-Denys’ work (e.g. Patricia Garfield (1974), Celia Green (1968), and Stephen LaBerge (1985, 1988)). Although we may consider the author of Les Ręves the father of modern lucid dream research, very little information about the book or its author has been available. Thus the purpose of this article is to present new information as a result of a search for the original publication of Les Ręves.

###### The Original Work of Les Ręves

The original work may have only been available to a few, as copies were scarce. Sigmund Freud (1900) states, “Maury, le sommeil et les ręves, Paris, 1878, p. 19, polemisiert lebhaft gegen d’Hervey dessen Schrift ich mir trotz aller Bemühung nicht verschaffen könnte” (trans.: Maury, Sleep and Dreams, Paris, 1878, p. 19, argues strenuously against d’Hervey, whose book I could not lay hands on in spite of all my efforts). Others like Havelock Ellis (1911), Johann Starcke (1912), and A. Breton (1955) refer to the fact that the original was very hard to get.

We have been able to trace original copies of Les Ręves to:

1. University Library, Utrecht, The Netherlands, Ex Libris 171. F.30;

2. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France. Ex Libris Res. p.R. 774 (R.71436 microfilm);

3. Yale Medical School Library, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Ex Libris; EBL 175;

4. New York Library, New York, New York, USA. Ex Libris; no data available; and

5. National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. Ex Libris; no data available.3

Description of Les Ręves

The information concerning Les Ręves presented here has been based upon the original copy of the University Library in Utrecht. This copy was probably rebound by the Institute. It contains 496 pages; the content is as follows:

Part 1. (Four chapters): Ce qu’on doit s’attendre ŕ trouver dans ce livre et comment il fut composé

(trans.: What you can expect to find in this book and the way it was composed).

Part 2. (Six chapters): Ou, tout en rapportant les opinions des autres, l’auteur continue d’éxposer les siennes (trans.: Information on the opinions of others. The author continues to explain his own).

Part 3. (Eight chapters): Observations pratiques sur les ręves et sur les moyens de les diriger (trans.: Practical observations on dreams and the ways to direct them).

There is also a summary, an index, and an appendix entitled, Un ręve aprčs avoir pris du hatchich (trans.: A dream after I took hashish).

On the frontispiece there are seven color pictures with references to them in the text (pages 381, 421, 422). These have been reprinted with the kind permission of the University Library, Utrecht [Editor’s Note: See the front cover of the December, 1988 issue of Lucidity Letter for these illustrations.] Six drawings of hypnagogic images, derived from the personal dream notebooks of the author of Les Ręves, have appeared as reprints in books by Coxhead and Hiller (1975) and Mackenzie (1966).

You can see that above these hypnagogic pictures there is a drawing of a dining room into which a painter and a completely nude young woman are entering. Although the text refers to this picture, it is not clear if this one is drawn by the author of Les Ręves. However, we are inclined to think so.
The original work had a cover with allegorical color drawings. [Editor’s Note: See the back cover of the December, 1988 issue of Lucidity Letter for the original Les Ręves front and back covers.] The back cover has geometric maze patterns on grey paper with the publisher’s name, Librairie d’Amyot, Éditeur, 8, Rue de la Paix, Paris. It also contains a printed list of their titles. In contrast to the alphabetical order of the other author’s names on the back cover of Les Ręves, the first name is “Hervey Saint-Denis (Marquis d’),” and refers to two of his works: Histoire de la Révolution ŕ Naples depuis 1793 (trans.: History of the Revolution at Naples Since 1793) and Poésies chinoises de l’époque des Thangs (trans.: Chinese Poetry from the T’ang period).
In his book Le Sommeil et les Ręves (trans.: Sleep and Dreams) Vaschide (1918) gives a description of this cover and suggests that the drawing is by the author of Les Ręves. We don’t know on what information Vaschide has based his assumption, because we could not find any reference to it in the text of the original Les Ręves.
The original cover is not available at the University Library of Utrecht, or the Bibliothčque Nationale, Paris, or the New York Public Library. With regard to the copy from the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, we have no information. Fortunately, the Yale Medical School Library possesses this cover, but it is in poor condition. Although in the right corner of the cover, there is a signature with the name (A. Danyou?, A. Darjou?, or A. Dayay?), this library could not vouch for the signature. We assume that A. Danyou (?) may be the designer of the cover.
Likewise, on the original we did not find an author’s name. The main clue of the writer’s wish to remain anonymous is found on page 339: “. . . L’autre me fut communiqué par un mathématicien illustre que je ne saurais nommer dans un livre ou je garde moi-męme l’anonyme” (trans.: I was informed by a well-known mathematician whose name I shall not reveal in a book in which I remain anonymous myself.) On page 48 the “anonymous” writer refers in a footnote to “le Marquis d’Hervey-Saint-Denys” as translator of Chinese poetry of the T’ang period. Also on page 457 the author writes that he is in possession of an original Chinese book. We know that Saint-Denys was a sinologue, so he probably had a copy.
A number of writers (e.g. Harald Meder, 1982) suggest that Les Ręves is an account of 1,946 dreams, gathered in 22 notebooks (cahiers) during a period of more than five years. Although the author of Les Ręves describes these cahiers, complete with color drawings on page 13, it is erroneous to think that Les Ręves was based only upon these. The author quotes dreams other than those from the cahiers and also presents dreams of others (e.g. pages 323, 420, & 435). We have not been able to trace these cahiers.

The Term Ręve Lucide (Lucid Dream)

Morton Schatzman writes in his shortened English version of Les Ręves (1982) that the author uses the expression ręve lucide (trans.: lucid dream) several times. But, according to Schatzman, we should not conclude that this expression has been used in the same manner as we use it today, i.e., for a dream in which the dreamer is aware of dreaming while dreaming. The current meaning of the expression was used for the first time by the Dutch writer/psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden (1912–13), who refers also to “Marquis d’Herve.” Indeed, the author of Les Ręves uses the term “lucid dream” as we define it today in the sentence, “aware of my true situation.” On page 287 he writes: “C’est-a-dire le premier ręve lucide au milieu duquel je posséderais bien le sentiment de ma situation” (trans.: That is to say, the first lucid dream in which I had the sensation of my situation). With the last part of this sentence, he states that he knew that he was dreaming.

Role of A.F. Alfred Maury

As noted earlier, Freud stated that Maury argued strenuously against d’Hervey. The mentioned work Le Sommeil et les Ręves appeared originally in 1861, six years before the publication of Les Ręves. The author of Les Ręves discusses many times the ideas of Alfred Maury, with whom he disagrees. In the fourth edition (1878) of Le Sommeil et les Ręves, Maury takes issue with the ideas of d’Hervey.
On page 1 of the 1878 edition there is a footnote in which Maury writes: “De-puis que j’ai écrit ces lignes, M. le marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denis,9 aujourd’hui professeur de chinois au Collčge de France, a publié sous le voile de l’anonyme, un livre intitulé ‘Les Ręves et les Moyens de les diriger’” (trans.: Since I have written the above lines, M. le Marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denis, today the Chinese teacher at the College de France, has published, under the cover of anonymity, a book entitled Les Ręves et les Moyens de les diriger.) This is the first time, to our knowledge, that the authorship of Les Ręves became publicly known. Because Maury was, like Saint-Denys, allied to the College de France, and because of the other indications mentioned in this article, we assume there remains little doubt Saint-Denys was indeed the author of Les Ręves. Although Maury disagrees with d’Hervey-Saint-Denys’ ideas, he writes on page 49: “Nous avons parfois des ręves trčs lucides, le matin, peu avant le réveil” (trans.: Sometimes in the morning we have very lucid dreams just before awakening.)

The Contribution of N. Vaschide and W. Leertouwer

In 1911 Vaschide published Le Sommeil et les Ręves, in which he summarizes and reviews the works of Maury, Freud, Mourly, Vold, and Saint-Denys. One chapter (pages 136–175) has been dedicated to d’Hervey-Saint-Denys, entitled Les re-cherches sur les ręves, du marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denis11 (trans.: The Investigations of dreams, by the Marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denis.) Those interested in this work will find an adequate description of Les Ręves.
The Dutch psychologist, W. Leertouwer, also reviews the Saint-Denys book in his book, Droomen en hun Uitlegging (pages 53–60). He indicates the author is “the French Marquis d’Hervey.” Because this book has no publication date, we are not certain in which year it appeared. The old-fashioned Dutch language suggests it must be from the beginning of this century. No further clues can be found in either book concerning the author of Les Ręves.

Secondary Sources

It must be noted that Freud got his information on Les Ręves from the publications of Alfred Maury and N. Vaschide. In his Traumdeutung he quotes Vaschide, who describes the ideas of d’Hervey concerning the coherence of dreams. We emphasize that Vaschide paraphrases d’Hervey. It is not, as Freud believed, a literal quotation. In fact, information used by many authors on Les Ręves does not come directly from the original publication (e.g., Freud refers to Maury and Vaschide and Johann Starcke refers to Vaschide). More recently a similar reference style appears. (e.g., Schatzman refers to the editor of the reissue from Les Ręves, Claude Tchou, and Tchou refers to no one.

1964 Reissue of Les Ręves

In 1964 editor Claude Tchou published a reprint of Les Ręves in Paris. In this issue the author was indicated as “Hervey de Saint-Denys” and the title has been shortened to Les Ręves et les Moyens de les Diriger (Tchou, 1964). This reissue is also difficult to find. We found a copy at the University Library Leiden, Holland (Ex Libris B43). This edition seems to be an exact version of the original, but it is not. No indication of the frontispiece drawings or the appendix have been included, for example. This appendix is interesting because the author reveals not only that he has been ill for a long period of time but that he has been administered strong doses of opium and that for a while he was very afraid of going mad. Further, he describes a horrible dream under the influence of hashish. [Editor’s Note: See the appendix of this article for the first English translation of the appendix of Les Ręves.]
Furthermore, we found that the editor of the 1964 reissue, in some cases, mixed his own footnotes with the original ones, again without acknowledgement (e.g., on page 50 of the original you read “1. Diodore Lvl.ch XXV.” The editor writes the same sentence on page 383, adds seven lines, and indicates that the entire footnote is his). Changes have been made in the text, again without appropriate indication (e.g., on page 339 from the original we read “L’anonyme” whereas, the reissue contains the word “l’anonymat”).
The reissue contains an extensive foreword by Robert Desoille, author of Le Ręve Éveillé en Psychothérapie (1945) (trans.: The Induced Dream in Psychotherapy). Desoille discusses Les Ręves; his contribution is worthwhile reading. Also a short Essai de biographie d’Hervey de Saint-Denys (trans.: Essay on biography of d’Hervey de Saint-Denys) is included.
We were surprised to discover that the reissue was not an identical version of the original, not only because this edition (on pages 306, 316, & 343) contains references to the color drawings and Appendix, but also because a lot of authors referred to the reissue without indicating it was not complete.
We asked Tchou about this in March of 1988. He stated that he could not remember this reissue of Les Ręves because he has published thousands of books, and he had no time for research on a publication that appeared nearly 25 years ago. Christian Bouchet (personal communication, August, 1988) informed us that Jacques Donnars was responsible for the Tchou edition and that the omission of the appendix was not a mistake, but a deliberate act due to its contents. If you read this appendix you’ll discover that it is indeed not stimulating reading.

Other Editions of Les Ręves

In 1982 Schatzman edited an English version of Les Ręves which is a shorter version of the 1964 reissue and thus does not include the drawings or appendix (nor does it refer to their existence). Although a shortened version is better than none at all, we conclude that this version should not be considered a translation, but rather an adaptation. Complete parts have not been included. In addition, the whole atmosphere of the original—almost totally a “flowery” text—has vanished in the short, dry English sentences.
This edition contains misleading and/or erroneous information, e.g. contrary to what was written on page 166 of this version, the original did not appear in 1869, but in 1867. The Marquis did not marry in 1870, but in 1868. Schatzman refers on page 3 of his version to an Italian edition of Les Ręves, edited by Laura Forti. Upon further discussion we were informed by him that the Italian publisher decided not to publish the book, after having contracted the translation.
In the bibliographic list from the German edition of Patricia Garfield’s Pathway to Ecstasy (1981), there was an announcement that a German version of Saint-Denys’ book was in preparation. To our knowledge no such publication has appeared yet. We were informed by F. Maissan (Amsterdam) and C. Bouchet (Paris) of the existence of a reprint in French of Les Ręves. It appeared a few years ago at Éditions d’Aujourd’hui, but we have no further information about it at this time. In December of 1987, we were informed by a spokesman of Elsevier Science International in Amsterdam that their organization prepared a complete English reprint. A few months later, however, the same spokesman withdrew his statement and said he knew nothing about it.
One wonders if a reprint of Les Ręves means “trouble” for publishers! As the area of lucid dreaming grows there is clearly a need to issue a more complete version of Les Ręves.

Biographical Details on Saint-Denys (1822-1892)

In the Essai de biographie d’Hervey de Saint-Denys, the editor describes how he searched for biographical data on the author but was surprised to find so little information on such an erudite person. An interesting chapter: it seems almost as if d’Hervey Saint-Denys erased his personal history.
Hervey was a respectable member of his society. He was awarded the Legion d’Honneur, and was president of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, professor at the College de France, sinologue, ethnologue, and author of several books.
He was born on the 6th of May, 1822, in Paris. We know little of his childhood and adolescence except that he had a private tutor. d’Hervey’s original name was Marie-Jean-Leon Lecoq, Baron d’Hervey de Juchereau, who became, due to adoption, Marquis de Saint-Denys. At the age of 19, the Marquis went to a school for oriental languages, where he studied Chinese and Tartaro-Manchu. At the age of 22, he started a literary career by translating a Spanish play into French—Le poil de la prairie (trans.: The Bareness of the Prairie). Other works include: Recherches sur l’agriculture et l’horticulture des chinois (trans.: Investigations of the Agriculture and Horticulture of the Chinese), La Chine devant l’Europe (trans.: China Before Europe), Poésies chinoises de l’époque des Thangs (trans.: Chinese Poetry from the T’ang Period), Histoire de la Révolution ŕ Naples depuis 1793 (trans.: History of the Revolution in Naples since 1793). Five years before his death on November 2, 1892, he published a work on the Chinese philosopher, Confucius.
One year after the publication of Les Ręves, at the age of 46, the Marquis married a 19-year-old Austrian orphan, Louise de Ward. They had no children. From the text of Les Ręves, we can conclude that he had at least one sister.
We believe that the available information on the book Les Ręves and its author is still limited. Nearly 120 years after its publication, we are still not even sure of the correct spelling of the author’s name! This is indicative of the many unanswered questions concerning Les Ręves and its author.

Appendix: Dream After I Took Hashish

English Translation by C.M. den Blanken
I have voiced the opinion—which has been shared by a lot of physiologists—that the somnabulistic and magnetic dreams, the ecstatic visions and hallucinations, as well as the dreams which are provoked by any sort of poison or narcotic, are more or less morbid modifications of the natural dream. But, in a book which has been exclusively dedicated to the study of natural sleep, I would be remiss by not including any observation on the psychological phenomenon of normal sleep. As an appendix, a complementary document, the experience which follows shall not be without interest. You’ll find in it, I think, elements of analytical comparison. I will show that a cerebral overexcitement which exaggerates and precipitates the movement of ideas, does not change at all the habitual laws of association.
The vividness of the illusions which bombard us when we are under the influence of narcotics like opium and hashish, cannot be ignored. A point which is probably not well-known, is that on taking those substances for the first time, you will seldom experience those delightful feelings which are reserved for those who have regular recourse to it. I suppose it is in this case a little like the first cigar; the physical unpleasantness gets the upper hand. Because I have been frequently administered strong doses of opium during a long illness, I have noted that gradual transition from gloomy and awkward dreams to those of idealism and excitement. As far as hashish is concerned, I had the rare opportunity to experiment while in excellent health. Here is my first dream:
It seemed to me that something had left my brain, like a spring in a defective watch, and that the chain of my memories wanted to unroll with an incoherent and unprecedented rapidity. In a faintly lit, uneven street I saw an interminable suite of marching people, dressed in black or brilliant uniforms, thin waifs, horrible street Arabs, women crowned with flowers seated on coffins or walking with the hearse. Next came carriages that stopped in front of me with their doors half-opened, as if they wanted to encourage me to make use of them. A mysterious attraction came over me, but, at the moment of stepping in, I shrank back with an inexpressible horror. I did not know which instinct told me that the carriage would take me to something horrible. I decided to go on foot. Bumping against passers-by, I headed quickly to a spot which I felt an urgency to arrive at yet not knowing where this place should be. I dared not ask the numerous people who bumped against me, because I was convinced they were my enemy. Finally I arrived at the unknown place and found I was with a young lady in an apartment belonging to someone else, whom I feared would be back any moment.
From there I am transported, I don’t know how, to a magnificent and splendidly lit salon. I am dressed in a ball costume. Evidently, I am to assist at a great feast. I regard my dress and notice it is smeared with a strange foam. I raise my eyes. In front of me is the image of the woman I love, but twenty years older and dressed in monastic clothing.
While at the salon, an elegant crowd enters. I notice that chandelier is about to extinguish, but I realize at the same that if I look at the candles one at a time, they will relight. Within a short time, fire lights up everywhere my eyes look. The gowns of the most charming ladies seem to become consumed with fire at my glance. Ashes fall, and now, horrible skeletons, purple mummies, or monsters eaten away by ulcerations, take the place of their ravishing bodies. Only the head remains charming and casts sad, wraithlike glances at me. What has not been set on fire by my eyes takes the most fantastic and unreasonable forms. A sofa elongates itself and becomes an extravagant ladder. I want to flee. The stairs change into an open wall. However, I escape from that evil place. I jump into one of those half-open door carriages of which I spoke. This time I refuse to return to the mysterious destination from which I wanted rapidly to flee.
I sit down, and the carriage departs. Horror! It is filled with blood. I want to leave, but it is too late. We drive at an incredible speed. Where am I going? I don’t know. I only see on the road thousands of horrible indefinite things which fill me with great fear. I imagine that I hear a friend’s voice in space. It seems as if he is with me but doesn’t realize his morbid state. He curses me when he dies. I would rather have died myself in order to be rid of that pool of cruel thoughts; but a voice shouts at me that this despairing wish shall not be answered.
At rare moments I know this is not real. I understand that I have “brain troubles,” but don’t know if this is momentary or forever. A terrible thought comes to my mind that my family, because of their blind concern for prolonging my life, would prolong my torture in that infernal shadow-play. I would never be able to express what I felt because I was, so to speak, isolated from the real world.
One moment I remember that I have seen myself before in an analogue state and that I have discovered a way to escape from it. I make an enormous effort to keep that thought, to make it clear, to remember. But such an effort causes me horrible pain in my brain. In another bizarre twist, I then imagine I see that thought as some kind of leech that tries, in vain, in a bloody way, to attach to the interior cavities of my skull, while an irresistible force reaches it and forces it to roll along with others in a general whirlpool.
Now there are some gaps. Humiliating images and scenes occur (e.g., I see myself with decorations and a uniform, at a dirty place, overcrowded with road-sweepers and drunken people who cover me with sarcasm and mud). Or, I imagine I have stolen, under the influence of some inexplicable hallucination, something insignificant. They drag me away to prison. All the folks whom I thought I could cling to seem to have an appointment to watch me pass by. Somehow I succeed in moving away by walking. I have created an enormous road. I arrive at the gates of a town, where I hope to find safe refuge. I have troubles with a strange customs-officer. They shoot just above my head, because they want to investigate my thoughts and not my luggage. An inner revelation comes over me. I have been transported to a world where the ideal replaces the real, where intellectuality is a contraband, where you are provided thoughts rather than acquire them [Editor’s Note: Literal translation reads, “where you are provided with thoughts like on earth with comestibles.”]. I tremble and hope that the customs-officers will not discover something wrong with me. I believe I have committed a crime, although I don’t have the slightest idea what it is. However, I enter. They compel me to leave my body behind at the gate. I notice they put it in a box with a label carrying my name. I wander around town as a shadow, hearing voices of invisible people like myself. I perceive thousands of strange impressions from the real world. Whether it was intellectual affairs which were locked up in golden or lead boxes, or whether it was essential material objects which moved by themselves, they came to talk to me. And I understood it all completely.
Soon I see myself carried away to an amphitheatre-theatre where a terrible surgical operation will take place. It will be performed on a prisoner who had tried to filch his body from customs. I am moved by the victim. Afterward, when the surgeon pricks his scalpel into the patient’s flesh, I feel a deep grief. I recognize that it is me who must endure all the suffering from those cruelties. I want to flee, but they have tied me up. The condemned joke terribly about the transition of sensibilities.
The violence of that situation takes me out of that critical atmosphere. I don’t know how, but I undergo a new series of internal surprises. First, I am absorbed by a vague and sudden fear. I find myself in a marvelous boudoir with several entrances. I see sinister apparitions arriving. As soon as I half-way open a door, some heart-rending sighs are emitted. Several friends come to embrace me. They are covered in a repulsive mud, but I don’t dare resist. I hear them laughing derisively, and then they leave. Next, I see my stomach swelling out of proportion. I remember I have swallowed an unknown reptile which is now developing itself. It makes a hole in my chest and puts its stinking and horrible head in front of my face. Then everything is over.
I return to my thought of investigating my own brain. I notice admirable hidden treasures, and I have the feeling I will never be able to retrieve them. I recognize also several abominable instincts, and I shiver at the thought of what they could bring. I ignore, by the way, how to handle those indescribable instruments of that immense laboratory. By accident I touch one and a formidable noise emits. I have the conviction that my brain-pan will collapse under the pressure of some unheard vibration-hurricane if I don’t open some part as an escape. Can I trepan myself. . . ?
In this manner that crazy dream went on. Several times I tried in a violent attempt of willpower to combat the tyranny of those disheartened illusions. But I was without a force to wake myself, and the dream returned with doubled intensity.
Mocking heads appeared from all sides. Finally, from time to time, the idea that I was killing myself travelled through my troubled mind, like a lurid flash of lightning in a stormy night. I asked myself if what I experienced was not a moral disorder of agony, or if that state was not Death itself, and as a consequence, the eternal rest which I had searched for.
These are the impressions I can remember. Probably, it is only a thousandth part of what went through my mind. The exaltation of the moral sensibility was violent; but, in the nature and lapses of thought I can’t discover anything that would not affirm my opinion that the analytical study of natural dreams is sufficient to explain the most varied morbid phenomenon. The awakening arrived gradually. At the same time that my visions lost their clarity, they became more relaxed. I had a rather slight somnolence period filled with fleeting impressions, several of which were graceful, and I opened my eyes five or six times without really seeing, before my real life took definite possession of me.
I found myself in a state of physical and moral numbness on the day that followed that agitated night. My memory was especially poor. However, convinced that this situation was very favorable for the analysis of the particular disorder of my mind, I took pen with a very heavy hand and made, with half-closed eyes, notes of my impressions. If this other fragment is not as interesting as I supposed on writing it, it offers, however, as an intermediate state between waking and sleeping—some significant indications which have made me decide to present it here fully. It is as follows:
It’s an uncommon state of mind in which I find myself. It seems to me like an induced dream which I see develop, like a fog which expands through my thoughts, a series of closely related reminiscences. I am aware of myself, but I don’t perceive any clear distinguishing ideas. I feel that if I could stop one, it would become the key to the preceding and succeeding ideas. But, apart from some vague extractions which don’t say anything to me, all of them escape before I’ve been able to catch them. Is it not so that a dream without images shows the same incoherence, the same spontaneous overflow of reminiscences?
If I make an effort to break through the fog which enwraps this daydreaming, I immediately feel a rather vivid pain in my head. If I want to return to reality, instead of letting my thoughts run by themselves, I have for a moment lost the memory of my own existence. The things which I know best, escape me. Every fleeting impression evaporates with such great rapidity, that not more than one sentence which I want to write down on paper arrives there. The sentences that I do scribble at this very moment write themselves mechanically, so to speak, by the instinctive correlation which is formed between the words that come into my mind and the letters which correspond to them. I haven’t enough liberty and mind to think it over.
If I want to preserve some recollection of this strange chaos, it’s necessary to let my pen write as quickly as possible, without re-reading those fleeting impressions and without understanding why it was spoiled. The domain of my thoughts seems to me like a white curtain on which, without letting a trace behind, the images of a magic lantern pass by.
The stenography itself is not able to record certain observations which strike me instantly by their precise lucidity, but demands other sentences which hardly remain present one second in my mind. Soon my hand is very tired. Regarding those elusive thoughts, I suppose there are resemblances to the images of the magic lantern. They are only reflections and not new conceptions.
The concatenation of thoughts which produce themselves this very moment, start almost always by an indefinite notion, which I try in vain to clarify. That indefinite notion directs me to a second impression which is no less fleeting. And that second one guides me to a third and so on, without becoming more clear. I suppose that if I was sleeping, those incomplete ideas would precisely form some horrible and indescribable dreams, of which the images escape even logical analysis.
Having an opportunity to take hashish again, and this time influenced by gay music and suitable circumstances by which I could direct my thoughts in a more agreeable direction, I had a dream very different from the one described. Concerning my state of mind the next day, it was exactly like the first time.
Fin (Written in 1867)
End (Translation in 1988)

Note on the authors: Dr. Carolus M. den Blanken was born in Utrecht (The Netherlands). He works as a psychotherapist in private practice and as a free-lance management trainer. Dr. Eli J.G. Meijer was born in Rotterdam (The Netherlands). He works as a psychopathologist at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Utrecht University and as a psychotherapist at RIAGG Institute, Utrecht.

Translator’s Note: For those interested in the relationship between narcotics and (lucid) dreams, I refer you to: Roos, M. 1984). Vergleichsstudie zwischen Klartraumerfahrungen und Erlebnisse unter dem Einfluss psychodelischen Drogen (trans.: Comparative study between lucid dream experiences and experiences under the influence of psychedelic drugs.) Doctoral Dissertation. Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe Universität, Frankfurt a/M, Germany.

References

Anonymous (1867). Les ręves et les moyens de les diriger; Observations pratiques. Paris: Librairie d’Amyot, Éditeur, 8, Rue de la Paix.

Breton, A. (1955). Les vases communicants. Paris.

An Historical View of Dreams and the Ways to Direct Them: Practical..., Le Marquis d’Hervey-Saint-Denys, C.M. den Blanken & E.J.G. Meijer

Coxhead, D. & Hiller, S. (1975). Visions of the night. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd. Desoille, R. (1945). Le ręve éveillé en psychothérapie. Paris: Les Presses Universitaires. Ellis, H. (1911). The world of dreams. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Freud, S. (1900). Die traumdeutung. Wien: Deuticke.

Garfield, P. (1974). Creative dreaming. New York: Simon and Schuster. Garfield, P. (1981). Der weg des traum-mandala. Interlaken: Ansata-Verlag. Green, C. (1968). Lucid dreaming. London: Hamish Hamilton.

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

LaBerge, S. (1988). Lucid dreaming in Western literature. In J.I. Gackenbach & S. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. New York: Plenum.

Leertouwer, W. (n.d.). Droomen en hun uitlegging. Amsterdam: Uitg. Schors.

MacKenzie, N. (1966). Dreams and dreaming. London: Aldus Books.

Maury, A.F.A. (1878). Le sommeil et les ręves; études psychologiques sur ces phénomčnes et les divers états qui s’y rattachent suivies de recherches sur le développement de l’instinct et de l’intelligence dans leurs rapports avec le phénomčne du sommeil. In Didier et Cie (Eds.), Quai des Augustins, Paris (originally appeared in 1861).

Meder, H. (1982). Träume bewußt machen. Wien/Freiburg/Basel: Herder-Verlag.

de Saint-Denys, Hervey (1982).Dreams and how to guide them. Translated by N. Fry and edited by Morton Schatzman. London: Gerald Duckworth.

de Saint-Denys, Hervey (1964). Les ręves et les moyens de les diriger. Edited by Jacques Donnars. In Claude Tchou (Ed.), Bibliothčque du Merveilleux. Paris.

Starcke, J. (1912). Nieuwe droomexperimenten in verband met oudere en nieuwere droom-theroieën. In Psychiatrische en Neurlogische Bladen, Maart–April, Nederlandsche Vereniging voor Psychiatrie en Neurologie, Amsterdam: Uitg. F. van Rossen.

van Eeden, F. (1912–13). A study of dreams. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 26, 431–461.

van Eeden, F. (1978). Dromenboek. Edited by D. Schluter. Amsterdam: Uitg. Bert Bakker.

Vaschide, H. (1918). Le sommeil et les ręves. In E. Flammarion (Ed.), Bibliothčque de Philosophie Scientifique, Paris (originally appeared in 1911).

##### V.2 Freud, van Eeden and Lucid Dreaming

ROBERT ROOKSBY and SYBE TERWEE

Exeter University, UK; Leiden University, The Netherlands

Editor’s Note: Although only a small portion of the original article is presented here, Freud’s letter is reproduced in its entirety.

Fredrik van Eeden, who is credited with coining the phrase “lucid dream” and publishing the first serious research into these dreams [has been] remembered more as a poet, essayist, and social reformer than as a psychopathologist. However, with recourse to van Eeden’s diaries and several of his biographies, with the knowledge that he is something of a major literary figure in the Netherlands, and with the discovery of a letter written by Freud to van Eeden, [a more pertinent] historical sketch can be drawn.

Fredrik Willem van Eeden (1860-1932), . . . after completing his medical training and Ph.D. work, . .. pursued both a literary career [as] one of the founders of the literary-political journal, De Nieuwe Gids, and a medical career . . . as a physician in Bussum. In 1887, he opened the first psychotherapeutic institute in The Netherlands, in collaboration with the seemingly practically-minded A.W. van Renterghem (van Eeden was the theoretician of the two). By 1893, van Eeden had lost interest in this “experiment in hypnosis” (Liebault method) along with psychotherapy. Until 1892, he did publish frequently in Dutch, English and French journals on psychotherapy, hypnosis and related subjects (Bulhof, 1983; Fontijn, 1990; Wentges, 1976).

It was probably not until Freud’s star rose at the beginning of this century that he seriously attracted van Eeden’s attention, which at first was very negative Yet something occurred which apparently made him begin to rethink his attitude towards psychoanalysis. We do not know the nature or cause of this change, . . . one of the most interesting of the questions yet to be answered about van Eeden.
If September 1913 represented the beginning of van Eeden’s intellectual turn-around, then it seems likely that his “conversion” to psychoanalysis was completed in February, 1914. At this time, van Eeden was on a lecture tour. On January 29th he was in Vienna and amongst his audience on that night were several psychoanalysts —including Freud. A meeting took place after the lecture, with Hugo Heller acting as “host,” which appears to have led to van Eeden being invited to Freud’s house for lunch on February 1st. This meeting seems to be the real point of full conversion. After this date van Eeden would never say anything against Freud himself, although he never lost his skeptical attitude towards some aspects of psychoanalysis. With this new attitude, van Eeden wrote an article on Freud in the German Daily, Frankfurter Zeitung (May 29, 1914). From this there is evidence that shortly after the lunch meeting an exchange of letters had occurred

Freud’s Letter To van Eeden

The following letter [which had not been published prior to the December 1990 issue of Lucidity Letter], would appear to be Freud’s response to a request by van Eeden for several points of clarification regarding dreams, and in particular, lucid dreaming. The full text of the letter reads:

1 March ‘14

Dr. Freud

Vienna 1X Berggasse 19

Dear Dr. van Eeden,
It is of great and valuable interest to me that you will be writing an essay on my work and I am happy to give you the information you request, although I cannot add any more to what has already been written in my “Interpretation of Dreams.” I secretly hope, however, that you have not read it properly and that I can induce you to re-examine a few points.
To your First Question: My “Interpretation of Dreams” is not based on dreams by neurotics, but largely on my own dreams. The assertion that one does not judge nor appraise in a dream, nor speak, cannot contradict your experiences, for it is derived from the distinction between manifest and latent dreamthoughts—which is a fundamental one—yet one which is so rarely being taken seriously. Analysis shows, that all thought, judgment and suchlike stem from the latent dreamthoughts in which, of course, our entire psychic activity is reflected. One must not, however, confuse the dream with the latent dreamthoughts, like the Swiss do now. The dream is, correctly perceived, the result of dream-work, a process that converts the latent thoughts into the manifest content. This dreamwork does not know judging, appraising, dialogue-forming and suchlike. Wherever something like this occurs in a dream it has been taken over from the dreamthought either dark or distorted, and reshaped.
Read again the relevant examples of my dreams in which manifest content as well as judgments and suchlike may appear just as in yours (Section Dreamwork). There is thus no contradiction between our experiences, but a misunderstanding, which is based on the fact that you neither accepted nor applied the premise, in every dream interpretation, of the distinction between manifest and latent dream content.
To your Second Question: I think you are being unjust by saying: for me there is nothing else psychic than what is conscious. This can only be said as long as one has not taken any notice of the facts of dream analysis, observation of parapraxes, study of neurosis.
Of course, every one of us knows only conscious processes in oneself and may conclude that those of some other person, unconscious to himself, are known to that person. But whoever analyzes must learn by necessity that he has erred in this quite natural premise, and that he can find psychic acts in himself that have remained unknown to his conscious awareness which he must, however because of certain consequences, deduce in the same way as reliable circumstantial evidence without a confession. Finally, analysis provides him with the means to raise to consciousness these, initially unconscious processes, similar to photography that makes visible otherwise invisible ultraviolet rays. I cannot understand, however, that the unconscious should mean a loosening of the relationship between our psychic life and our individual body.
My unconscious thought is my individual property in the same way as my conscious one. At this point we are not threatened by a radical change. I now have two copies of your work. Jelgersma’s talk surprised and pleased me. Thus the Interpretation of Dreams has been recognized in an academic setting in your little Holland of all places. It was in fact particularly on this point, that Bleuler did not follow me. Your visit has left us with the most pleasant memories. The ladies still often speak of you and your so informal and charming companion, and the boys regret not to have seen you, because of the change of your initial plans. My kindest regards to you together with the request to continue sentiments of friendship regardless of our theoretical disagreements.

Yours Faithfully

Freud

The translation of the German transcript of this letter has been made to conform to current translations ofFreud. Strictly speaking, the word Seelische means “soul” or “soul-based.” In the version above it has been left to read “psyche” and “psychic” because of the implications of the translation problems . . . with respect to our current understanding of Freud.
It would seem that the exchange of letters between the two men was not abundant, though it may well be that there are a few others in existence. It is obviously of great interest to find the van Eeden original which led to this reply.

Overall, Freud’s letter offers three main points:

1. It supports the claim made in van Eeden’s diary that the two men did meet, at least on one occasion;

2. It alludes to the article . . . which appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung; but most importantly of all:

3. It offers Freud’s basic attitude towards what we can call in retrospect the “lucid dreaming concept” (although it is not mentioned by that name in the letter itself).

The Limited Importance of Manifest Content

A central point in Freud’s dream theory is his distinction between the manifest dream and latent dream content On a practical level, this meant that it was not so important how a person experienced the manifest dream, but rather what the symbolic content of a dream actually related to in the unconscious. It is only by breaking the person’s symbolic code that the analyst can trace the source of the dream, hidden in the person’s unconscious.
This distinction between the two parts of an individual’s psyche is applied by Freud to the difference and function of the person’s conscious awareness of the dream (as suggested in the lucidity concept) . . . as far as the general idea of lucidity in dreams goes, Freud indicates in the letter that he is basically happy with it. “The assertion that one does not judge nor appraise in a dream, nor speak, cannot contradict your experiences “ Where he takes issue is in the interpretation of this activity and the importance that may be attached to it. Since, according to Freud, the conscious mind is the less important part of a person’s total psychological activity (the bulk of which lies in constant flux in the unconscious) it is of little real importance how dreams are experienced—especially so in the context of the therapeutic process. In the final analysis, we can say that it is Freud’s devaluing of the manifest dream (a point which contributed to the split with Jung) that naturally led him to “devalue” the idea of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming posed no threat to his major thesis
. . It would appear that shortly after van Eeden’s article on Freud and the related exchange of letters, van Eeden dropped out of the psychoanalytic scene. Exactly why is not known at present. However, since . . . Freud did know about the concept of lucid dreaming, a new area of research has presented itself. New [topics might include] the tension between lucidity and psychoanalytic notions (e.g., the manifest dream, wish-fulfillment, and Freud’s denial of judgment in dreams), or van Eeden’s ideas as expressed in the Diaries or any of his other written work in relation to psychoanalytic ideas in general.

Selected References

Bulhof, I.N. (1983). Freud en Nederland. Baarn: Ambo.

Fontijn, Jan (1990). Tweespalt. Het leven van Fredrik van Eeden tot 1901. Amsterdam: Querido.

Freud, van Eeden and Lucid Dreaming, Robert Rooksby & Sybe Terwee

Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams.In Standard edition of the complete psychological works (S.E. Vol. 4 & 5). London: The Hogarth Press.

Nunberg, H. & Federn, E. (Eds.) (1967). Minutes of the Vienna psychoanalytic society (4 vols.). New York: International University Press.

Rooksby, R. and Terwee, Sybe J.S. (1990). Freud, van Eeden and lucid dreaming. Lucidity Letter, 9(2), 18–28.

Rooksby, R. (1989). Problems in the historical research of lucid dreaming. Lucidity Letter, 8(2), 75–80.

Terwee, Sybe J.S. (1990). Hermeneutics in psychology and psychoanalysis. New York: Springer.

van Eeden, F. (1913). A study of dreams. In Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 26, 431–461. (Reprinted in: R.L. Woods (Ed.), The world of dreams. New York: 1947, pp. 309–321 (partial); in Celia Green, Lucid dreams, Oxford: 1968 (partial); and in C.T. Tart (Ed.), Altered states of consciousness, New York: 1969/1975, pp. 145–158).

van Eeden, F. (1971). Dagboek 1878–1923 (Diary, 4 volumes). Culemborg: Tjeenk Willink-Noorduijn.

##### V.3 Senoi, Kilton Stewart and The Mystique of Dreams: Further Thoughts on an Allegory About an Allegory

G. WILLIAM DOMHOFF

University of California, Santa Cruz

“Senoi” dream theory, which is centered around the idea that we should share and control our dreams for spiritual development, is an attractive theory said to derive from an appealing, non-violent people living simply in the highlands of Malaysia. But the real story of “Senoi” dream theory can be a painful one for at least two reasons that go beyond the usual academic conflicts over the validity and usefulness of ideas. First, some people in the United States and elsewhere make their living off of it by leading dream groups; they therefore have more at stake than do professors who are secure in their jobs whether their ideas pan out or not. Second, the theory resonates with deeply held cultural and spiritual values that almost compel people to believe it; they therefore become very upset when it is questioned.
So, to say that this essay discusses my book on “Senoi” dream theory and various reactions to it is to assert that the essay concerns a very touchy subject. Although I will begin by telling about what is in The Mystique of Dreams, for those who have not gotten to it yet, my main point here is to use reactions to the book to state more explicitly what I see as its underlying themes and messages. That the book is an allegory about the study of dreams seems to be lost on some people, as is the fact that it suggests an attitudinal stance for the scientific investigator that has a playfulness to it. Finally, I also will use this occasion to report some new perspectives on the fascinating life of Kilton Stewart, the anthropologist who originally brought us “Senoi” dream theory.
At the level of appearances, The Mystique of Dreams sets itself four main tasks. First, it brings together all available anthropological information to show that the real Senoi do not practice our version of “Senoi” dream theory in any way, shape, or form—not now, and not in the 30s when Stewart visited them. Contrary to popular belief, there is no talk of dreams around breakfast—in fact, there is no breakfast. Nor are there dream clinics during the day; group meetings are about personal disputes that have reached the point where they threaten to disrupt community life. They go on and on, like committee meetings in America, and people dread them. Furthermore, there is no thought of controlling dreams—quite the opposite. Spirits choose whether or not to come into dreams, to adopt the dreamer. There is no teaching of rules of dream control to children; Senoi say it is bad to teach children anything. Finally, dream life is not full of gifts, friendship, and sensuality—Senoi usually have dreams of failure, frustration, chase, and falling, just like the rest of us.
Secondly, my book traces the charmed existence of Stewart for clues as to why he said things others didn’t. I learned that he happened on the Senoi by accident, had no knowledge of them when he first visited their settlements, never learned their language, and spent no more than several weeks with them on two different occasions that were separated by four years—two weeks during the first visit in 1934 while on a census march from settlement to settlement, seven weeks the second time in 1938. Moreover, some things he says in his famous 1951 article on “Dream Theory in Malaya” are not said in his 1948 dissertation for the London School of Economics, or are contradicted by what he wrote in the dissertation.
The information I gathered on Stewart provides insight into these problems. For a characterization of Stewart, there is no beating the first glance of him in 1937 by a woman on an around-the-world trip who recorded the meeting in her diary. This woman, Claudia Parsons, is alive and well today in England. She is in her eighties, still traveling, and one of my key informants. In what follows she compares Stewart with a young man named Christian she met earlier in her journey:
He had the same attractive air of deviltry, the same stocky figure. But he was broader than Christian and rather older. He wore sandals on his feet, and his linen suit was that of the beachcomber hero in an American film who is either about to reform or is slowly sinking to a living death There was more than idle curiosity in that academic forehead, in that Bible history head. One felt that John the Baptist had just caught the bus.
If Stewart was a bit of a character, he was a generous character, as Parsons also reports in talking about their later automobile trip from India to London in a two-seater Studebaker:
Stewart’s whole wealth was a rapidly dwindling 60 pounds with hope of another 20 pounds in Cairo, but instead of pondering on the hiatus between here and England, he was concerned only with how to support the beggar population of the countries through which we passed.
In addition, Stewart was a renowned womanizer. Two women mentioned that fact in the first moments of our interview, then said, “But he never seduced me.” His brother Omer, a highly productive empirical anthropologist who taught at the University of Colorado until his retirement, explained Kilton’s technique: he’d approach up to a dozen women a day and ask them if they wanted to make love. Eleven would slap him away, but the twelfth eventually would say yes. Stewart obviously tolerated rejection better than most men do. More seriously, making love and expounding on dreams, values, and morality were closely intertwined for Stewart.
After my book appeared, I asked Omer to see if any of his many, many Mormon relatives might send me their impressions and memories of Kilton (yes, this carefree wanderer was an elder of the Mormon Church). Of relevance here are comments by two female relatives, one eight years younger than Kilton, the other 22 years younger. It is noteworthy that seduction and spiritual concerns come up together in both reminiscences; the second also shows that even incest taboos were not a barrier to Stewart’s love of the chase:
Although Kilton was eight years my senior we were both students at the University of Utah at the same time for a couple of years. He was a source of pride and embarrassment to me—already controversial and too outspoken. My sorority sisters and girl friends found him handsome, strange and fascinating, and I never knew how many of them lost their virginity and religion through him. We loved to have all night discussions, Kilton at the center, and the participants not daring to believe him and not quite able to completely disbelieve. He stirred us up and made us think and question. He was a guru who needed followers and found them.
The second relative wrote:
On the occasion of the annual hike, my aunt and uncle and other guests were treated to a sort of hula dance Kilton claimed he had learned in a Tibetan monastery to make him more holy, but it was obvious to us all that he had unholy thoughts on his mind, and when one of the men asked, “Are you sure you didn’t learn it to make yourself better in bed?” He just laughed. I can’t remember whether that gathering was the night before the hike or the night after, but I do know that when I came down the mountain the afternoon following the hike, Kilton met me and took me to some natural hot springs to bathe, and tried to seduce me. I was only seventeen at the time [he was 39], but his chances of seducing me were so remote that it was my turn to laugh. But I feel sure that Kilton made many, many women happy, if only briefly, with his ardent and uncritical, warm and open, happy-go-lucky acceptance of any pleasures that life might put in his path.
I never saw Kilton after I was out of college, so I never really knew him as an adult. But he was unforgettable, one of the gentlest and sweetest people on earth—if he hadn’t had such wicked thoughts he could have been called Christlike. Thank heaven for those wicked thoughts!
More to the point, as hinted in the above accounts, Stewart was widely recognized among those who knew him to be a notorious storyteller. As his brother Omer wrote to me, “Kilton was a great storyteller and I often had the impression that he would not worry about the exactness of details if it might interfere with his narrative.” People never knew what to believe. Two different people, one a very old friend, actually asked me, “Did he really get his Ph.D.?” One of his friends from the 30s finally reacted to my persistent request for details by writing in exasperation that he couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about because no one who knew Kilton personally had taken his theoretical claims seriously.
I also should say there was a darker or shadow side to Kilton Stewart. In many ways he was maddening for his friends to deal with because he was so disorganized, casual, and unpunctual, and several of the women who loved him said or wrote that they could not think of staying with him. As one of these women, not Claudia Parsons, wrote in her diary in the 30s upon parting with Stewart after several intensive weeks of study and travel:
Life seems very good tonight—sort of stable again. I feel so well, as though I could never be tired again or cross. What is it about [Kilton] that is so disturbing? Why should a person who takes life so joyously and calmly be so provocative of storm?
Since my book is an allegory about “Senoi” dream theory, and not a biography of Stewart, the underside of his life is not in it. But this underside may be another reason why there can be strong emotional reactions to “Senoi” dream theory. Maybe no one can really be that nice and happy. Maybe we get very angry when we have to face that possibility. Certainly Senoi are not as nice as Stewart made them out to be, and Stewart hid his dark side in his writings and his dealings with most people.
The third goal of my book is to explain why “Senoi” dream theory became so attractive to Americans in the 60s and 70s. My first answer is that Stewart was a quintessential American, almost a caricature of American values—optimistic, open-handed, adventurous, a believer in self improvement and spiritual uplift. He appealed to basic American beliefs, and especially the idea that society and people can be changed and controlled. We can become better and better. “Senoi” dream theory is American can-do. We can conquer inner space as well as outer space. I call Stewart the B. F. Skinner of dreams. Only an American like Skinner could insist that all behavior can be controlled through rewards and punishments, and only Stewart, not Europeans like Freud or Jung, could even begin to think that dreams, of all things, could be controlled through social learning and encouragement by the moral authorities and leaders of a society. It’s as American as apple pie, which doesn’t make it wrong, of course, but it should never be forgotten that there was a near-obsession with mind control and self-improvement at many times in American history before prophets like Skinner and Stewart came along. Furthermore, I think it is a very different kind of mind control from the inward-turning meditational efforts we see in some Eastern religions. From my vantage point, they don’t practice improvement and can-do, but self-denial.
But there is more to why Americans came to like “Senoi” dream theory. After all, the idea sat around from 1951 to 1965 before it began to catch on. There was a new context—the civil rights movement and Kennedy Administration, both of which created the stirrings that made the human potential movement possible. Then, too, “Senoi” dream theory achieved an institutional base through use at the famed Esalen institute, where much less was done with it than was later claimed. Finally, legitimacy was given to the theory by the various dream experts who wrote about it —the American public tends to trust medical and scientific experts in the way it used to trust preachers. Put more generally, “Senoi” dream theory is an American allegory about the self-improvement that is possible in quiet country communes like the real Senoi seem to live in, and like some Americans tried to live in during the late 60s and early 70s, when the war in Vietnam made the new search for rebirth and authenticity all the more poignant.
Now, these generalizations need to be qualified a bit. “Senoi” dream theory is only one aspect of the new dreamwork, which in turn is but a small part of a human potential movement that embraces only a minority of the overall population. In that sense, the movement has been confined primarily to the young, the college-educated, the searchers and seekers, and the mind workers of the upper-middle class. “Senoi” dream theory is not a mass movement.
“Senoi” dream theory is an American allegory about the search for authenticity and self-improvement that plays on basic American values projected onto the Senoi, but it is not a hoax. Kilton Stewart was not a hoaxer as Carlos Castaneda is, but a true believer, albeit a true believer with more humor and impishness than most. Claudia Parsons wrote me the following pertinent comments after reading the published version of my research. They are not in response to a question by me, but are one of her reactions to the fact that Senoi do not have the dream practices Stewart imputed to them:
To what extent, then, was Kilton a charlatan? With his good looks, charisma, fund of experience and roving eye, one might be forgiven on first meeting him to class him as an attractive rogue, a playboy. I was certainly doubtful of his having the necessary qualifications for practicing psychotherapy when I met him on that bus, though he seemed imbued with knowledge of it, and later I was to see instances of favorable results. But one had not to be long in his company to discover that his interest in humanity lay far deeper than sex or profit. He was deeply serious and beyond words charitable. A friend to whom I introduced him described him as “God, gone wrong.” And it wasn’t a bad description.
As for the several other dream theorists such as Ann Faraday and Patricia Garfield who contributed in one way or another to spreading the allegory of “Senoi” dream theory, they are decent people who did not realize their comments would be seen as part of a larger mosaic of verification by the reading public; they did not realize their repetitions of Stewart’s ideas would give his claims greater legitimacy. None saw it as his or her responsibility to check out the claims before writing them into popular books, and no one else thought “Senoi” dream theory worth the time and effort of the proverbial “hard look” until it became a growth industry. But once a few doubts were raised in the late 70s, it was only a matter of time until someone like me contacted anthropologists who were experts on the Senoi, or someone like Faraday went to the Malaysian Highlands to see Senoi dream practices firsthand.
The fourth thing my book does is to search the clinical and research literature for evidence on the efficacy of “Senoi” dream practices in the United States. After all, the origins of an idea tell us nothing about its validity or usefulness. An idea has to be dealt with on its own merits. This I did, presenting all the evidence on both sides of the question, and then concluding that aside from some striking claims by a few people, there is no reason to believe that “Senoi” dream theory works very well for very many people. I did not say the idea has fared so badly that further study of it should be disbanded forthwith, but I did say that supporters of “Senoi” dream theory have not brought forth the kind of systematic scientific evidence that it is incumbent upon them to produce if we are to believe their large claims for the power of “Senoi” dream theory.
So much by way of summary and brief commentary on the four ostensible aims of The Mystique of Dreams. I turn now to how people reacted to it, and I am happy to report that most have found it balanced and enjoyable. However, there are a few critics of two very different types that I would like to call the hard-line scientists and the spiritualists. Hard-line scientific critics disliked the book because they thought I was too easy on Stewart. They felt he had led the scientific community down the garden path with half-baked research, and they wanted him exposed for perpetrating a fraud. Here is one example of this type of reaction from an anonymous reader of the manuscript for the University of California Press:
There is another matter that I feel uneasy about, and addressing it might lead the author to enlarge the manuscript in a different direction. I think most readers will feel that he is far too lenient with Kilton Stewart. The author says that Stewart “misunderstood the Senoi and mistakenly attributed his own ideas to them.” But why shouldn’t we conclude, rather, that Stewart was a con artist? The excellent detective work in the first part of the book makes him out a genial liar, and I was sometimes bothered that the author refused to say as much.
Well, as I tried to make clear earlier in this essay, I think that Stewart is best characterized as a romantic storyteller who stumbled on to some potentially interesting ideas about dreams. Given the meager stock of new ideas within the area of dream study, and the lack of interest in dreams within the behaviorist and cognitivist schools that predominate in psychology, I thought it more important in this instance that Stewart was provocative than that he mistakenly imputed his own ideas to Senoi. Then, too, I didn’t want to fall into what could be interpreted as an indirect attack on the 60s, which expressed some of the best there is in American values. I loved the 60s, at least up through 1968 or 1969 when the Jerry Rubins, Eldridge Cleavers, and Marxists took over.
Spiritualist critics reacted negatively to a different aspect of the book. They saw it as one part of an overall academic attack on both the usefulness of “Senoi” dream theory and the spiritual rebirth or awakening of which it is one aspect. They said that the testimony to positive results by those who have taken part in “Senoi”-based dreamwork groups in the United States is quite enough in the way of evidence for its usefulness. This view is symbolized by Strephon Williams’ review of The Mystique of Dreams in The Dream Network Bulletin.
In my view, Williams misreads and undervalues the scientific stance. To say “the evidence that dream sharing may be useful or dream control possible is only suggestive at this time,” which he rightly quotes me as writing, is not to say the idea is wrong or disproved. However, it does make crystal clear that to believe in “Senoi” dream theory is a leap of faith. From a scientific point of view, it is not the responsibility of skeptics to disprove a new idea, but of proponents to support the idea. Moreover, that an idea is part of a spiritual movement that makes some people feel good, at least for a time, is no systematic evidence for that usefulness. There are many religious, political, and spiritual movements that make the same claims, and they too judge their validity in terms of personal testimony or their number of followers. But the rise and fall of these movements, and the cycling of people in and out of them, is well documented. There is also the widely-known fact of placebo effects in the investigation of new medicines or therapeutic practices. Given these lessons of history and earlier experimental studies, I do not think there is any substitute for a scientific examination of new ideas, however slow or difficult or annoying that approach may be in some situations.
However, the criticisms raised by the hard-line scientists and the spiritualists do not touch upon the main messages of The Mystique of Dreams, so in conclusion I want to return to the theme of allegory. I earlier said “Senoi” dream theory is an allegory about the reaffirmation of American values through a search for an allegedly-lost authenticity. That, I think, is a more important conclusion of my book than the truthfulness of Kilton Stewart on the usefulness of ideas about dream control. But beyond that I had an even more important point to make, at least from my perspective. My book is in fact an allegory too. It is not only a story about Americans and their beliefs, but a cautionary tale about the difficulties of studying dreams in a systematic way. In that sense, it is a scientific allegory about a spiritual allegory.
It was not only Stewart who sold us a bill of goods about dreams in the ever-hopeful 60s. He was not the only one who got carried away with himself. We were uncritical in the face of other theorists besides Stewart. The rise and fall of “Senoi” dream theory parallels the rise and fall of the “new science of dreams,” also known as the “new biology of dreaming.” That dreams only occur in a stage of sleep called REM, that eye movements track dream content, that there is a need to dream—all these claims and more were fully believed and communicated to an eager public by many people, including me, before they were replicated and carefully checked. And all of them have proven to be false. We dream during both non-REM and REM sleep, eye movements do not always follow dream content, and REM deprivation does not have the drastic effects it was first thought to have. Apparently, then (and here is my punch line) it was as difficult for hard-nosed physiologists, physicians, and psychologists working in scientific sleep laboratories to avoid creating myths about dreams as it was for an American adventurer in the jungles of Malaysia. Who are we, who created laboratory myths, to look down our noses at Kilton Stewart?
Ah, but I do not close now, nor in my book, on a critical note. I claim that both Stewart and the laboratory scientists had the virtue of stimulating new interest in dreams, and of leading to new ideas and findings thereby. After all, Stewart’s ideas about dream control seem to work for at least a few people who report fantastic, orgasmic sex dreams and a decline in chase dreams. Thus, I take a stance of gentle, scientific skepticism rather than harsh scientific rejection.
Beyond that, I believe we ought to learn to enjoy our scientific myths once they unravel rather than becoming upset and embarrassed about them. They are fun to believe while we are believing them, and scandalous to read about when we begin to see through them. They tell us about ourselves in a whimsical kind of way. Such a stance puts me somewhere between the two types of critics mentioned earlier, and leaves me wondering which of our current scientific certainties will give us our next chuckle at our own expense.

##### V.4 The Selling of the Senoi

ANN FARADAY and JOHN WREN-LEWIS

Clovelly, New South Wales, Australia

It has been said that when religions are faced with new discoveries challenging their authority, they react in three predictable stages: first, “It’s not true”; second, “It’s wicked”; and third, “We knew it all along so why make a fuss about it?” A remarkably similar process is currently taking place amongst True Believers in the religion of so-called “Senoi dream control.”
Their first protest, when reports began to appear in the late 1970s denying that the Senoi tribe of Malaysia really practice dream manipulation, was to accuse the “militaristic Malaysian government” of suppressing both the gentle aborigines and their secret of non-violence. It was even seriously suggested that all visitors, including professional researchers, were ushered into jungle “concentration camps” where brainwashed Temiar, speaking through government interpreters, denied all knowledge of a dream control culture. Great care was taken, so the story went, to see that outsiders never penetrated to the hidden remnant of Temiar/Senoi who had escaped from government surveillance to keep their traditions alive in the jungle depths.
When all such wish-fulfillment fantasies had been exposed as nonsense—and we can personally attest to the fact that there are no brainwashed Temiar living in concentration camps, and that anyone who is seriously interested can visit the deepest jungle villages without finding any trace of dream control—the armchair romantics progressed to Stage 2. It is wicked, they now argue, to impugn the scientific reputations of these two great anthropologists, Pat Noone and Kilton Stewart, and their classic research of the 1930s; if contemporary Temiar don’t practice dream manipulation, it must mean that their ancient culture has been destroyed by modernization.
Well, we have now spent over a year in Malaysia, living and working in Temiar villages without any government interpreters to distort the record of officials whose presence might have imposed inhibitions, and it would be hard to imagine a people more dedicated to preserving their traditions intact despite all the changes going on around them. We spent night after night listening to tales of olden days or joining in their frequent trance/dance sessions in which dream-inspired songs are used to call spirits, and our welcome would have been short-lived had we not scrupulously observed their time-hallowed rituals and taboos. We made a special point of talking to elders who could recall the 1930s, and one of them, who actually told his dreams to Noone and Stewart, became a key informant in our investigations. We also sought out the dreamers named by Stewart in his Ph.D. thesis, finding two of them still living and interviewing the families of others.
Sadly, we must report that not a single Temiar recalled any form of dream control education in childhood or any such practice amongst adults; in fact they vehemently denied that dream manipulation has ever been part of their culture. And dreams play such an integral part in their whole religious life that we cannot conceive of a major dream-practice being allowed to fade into oblivion when the religion itself is so very much alive. There is an elaborate Temiar lore for interpreting dreams as warnings or omens (though only the shaman’s interpretations have ever been given serious credence), and great heedhas always been paid to anyone receiving a song or dance in dreams, for this indicates the emergence of a new shaman to invoke spirits for healing or protection of the village.
But no one, absolutely no one, would ever have presumed to ask for, still less demand, such a gift from a dream-character, as Western “Senoi dream theory” advocates. This would be high heresy for Temiar religion, in which the gunig or protective spirit always chooses its human vehicle and would be repelled by any hint of coercion; in fact the Temiar abhor coercion of any kind, dreaming or waking. They dismiss as nonsense the idea that children can be trained to confront hostile dream-characters, and boggle at the idea of converting such a figure into a gunig by fighting or killing it. On a more mundane level, they deny any tradition of offering gifts the next day to neighbors who have threatened or attacked them in dreams, and they can make no sense of the notion that sex dreams “should” always end in orgasm. For some Temiar, indeed, succumbing to sex in a dream is interpreted as seduction by a bad spirit, and all our informants insisted that incestuous dream sex portends disaster. Normally a good sex dream is either taken literally or interpreted as a kill in tomorrow’s hunt.
Another point we took special pains to probe was whether Temiar culture had ever given any place to what is now in the West called dream lucidity, awareness within a dream that one is dreaming. We framed our questions very carefully (an essential precaution in any investigation like this) and were interested to find that many Temiars, and notably all our shaman informants, understood at once what we were asking. In other words, they had no difficulty in grasping that one might have such awareness in a dream—but they emphatically denied that it played any part in their tradition. As one old and reputedly powerful tiger-shaman put it, when a dream character speaks or touches you in a song, it seems at the time like an ordinary person or animal (and as we all know, there is nothing odd about animals speaking in dreams). Only on waking is the figure interpreted as a spirit guide, and waking interpretation—dismissed as irrelevant by many Western dream advocates—is central to all Temiar dream lore.
As more and more evidence along these lines reaches Western literature (and there is plenty more still to come), True Believers are moving to Stage 3—”Why all the fuss? Does it matter what these little people in Malaysia do or did? They have served, through the writings of Stewart and others, to provide an inspiring myth of noble savages from whom the West might learn the art of self-improvement through dream manipulation. Now that we’ve gotten started, and have found that the techniques work for us, we can conveniently dump the real Senoi.”
Perhaps, if you’ve no qualms of conscience about committing intellectual genocide—but in any event we must put a ban on the misuse of their name, which proponents of dream control seem reluctant to do. Just enclosing the word “Senoi” in inverted commas isn’t good enough, for the real Senoi have a real dream culture of which they are very proud, and they become quite indignant when they hear their name identified with concepts utterly alien from their own. Some smart leaders even suggested to us that their newly-formed tribal association could sue, or perhaps insist on a royalty from every book or workshop that takes their name in vain! Meanwhile, writings are already in the pipeline, from ourselves and others, which will bring real Senoi dream culture firmly into Western literature, so nothing but confusion can come from retaining the name for psychological techniques invented in America. Howard Revic’s term “American Senoi dreamwork” must surely be the ultimate confusion and the deepest ethnic insult, for the values of the real Senoi dream culture are poles apart from the self-improvement cults of the contemporary West.
The argument that the word “Senoi” is so firmly entrenched in the literature as a synonym of dream control that it will have to stay is sheer evasion. There is still time to set the record straight, and we shall see that it is done in the new editions of Ann’s books Dream Power and The Dream Game—in fact this was the main reason why we took time out to visit Malaysia. Meanwhile perhaps readers of Lucidity Letter could suggest an alternative term. “Stewart dreamwork” has already been suggested, but this too could be misleading, for many ideas found in modern so-called “Senoi” dream workshops have little connection with his writings. (The puzzle of how Stewart reached his conclusions is another fascinating story, to be told elsewhere in due course.) Probably the only truly honest way out will be for every group leader to take personal responsibility for whatever techniques he or she wishes to promote, and let them stand entirely on their own feet.
As for real Senoi dream culture, we believe it will be of far more than academic interest in the West, precisely because it involves concepts quite different from those of contemporary psychology. While we ourselves do not yet understand fully the experiential meaning of the communion with nature-spirits which the Senoi claim to enjoy in their dreams and trances/dances, still less what these spirits “really” mean in psychological or theological terms, there seems no doubt that the shaman, and through him the rest of the people, can tune in to the natural environment in subtle ways quite unknown to most Westerners. (A notable exception seems to have been William Blake, who anticipated Senoi shamanism in his vision of nature’s “fearful symmetry” as a tiger burning in the forests of the night.) We both had many dreams of strange mystical intensity while living in the jungle, convincing us that these gentle people and their strange religion had touched off some long-neglected faculty for “spiritual communion” with nature. And is it not just some such faculty, rather than more techniques of control, which is essential to save our planet from destruction?

##### V.5 Techniques and Antecedents: A Response to Giesler

ROBERT KNOX DENTAN

State University of New York at Buffalo

Editor’s Note: In this validation of Faraday and Wren-Lewis by an anthropologist and ethnographer, Dentan refers to “Comments on ‘The Selling of the Senoi’” by Patric V. Giesler. Giesler wanted to know if Faraday and Wren-Lewis were cog-nizant of certain fieldwork pitfalls, since they were not ethnographers. He gives as an example a difficulty he himself had when studying Jurema shamans’ beliefs about psychokinesis. When interviewing them about tales he had heard on a pre-vious trip, he kept getting nothing but “No” answers to the question, “Have you ever seen an object move by itself?”—until he realized he had to reframe the ques-tion because of conflicting cultural assumptions. His informants didn’t believe objects moved “by themselves”—spirits moved them.

The editor [Jayne Gackenbach] has asked me to respond to Giesler’s insightful comment on Ann Faraday’s and John Wren-Lewis’s (1984; henceforward F&WL) “The Selling of the Senoi.” Giesler’s comment falls in two parts:

1. Questions about research methodology; and

2. An explanation about what a “yes” answer to the questions might mean in terms of the reliability of the Senoi data.

Correspondingly, my response:

1. Stresses how vital these questions are in matters of this sort, since psychologists in general are unfamiliar with the vicissitudes of ethnographic fieldwork; but

2. Concludes that, in this particular case, only an ellipsis in the original note by F&WL makes their conclusions seem debatable on these grounds.

Anthropologists who read and write ethnographies evaluate ethnographic re-ports by reference to two sets of criteria: the duration and conditions of fieldwork, and the way in which authors handle problems of context and translation. In the first area, ethnographic fieldwork should be intensive and holistic (Firth, 1963: 17–18). An ethnographer should reside in the community long enough, usually about a year, to become familiar at first hand with both the language and the pattern of daily life. Living elsewhere, e.g. at night, and commuting to the people (“motel ethnography”) or traveling through an area without settling down (“tourist ethnography”) works against the personal rapport and sense of the quotidian that mark good ethnographic writing (Marcus, 1980; Marcus and Cushman, 1982). People’s accounts of their lives and dreams simplify and generalize, and often idealize or mystify, what they actually do. Deeds are as important as creeds, but an ethnographer must be on the spot to observe how people deal with their dreams in the humdrum of daily living as well as how they talk about dreams. A knowledge of quotidianlife is vital if an ethnographer is to avoid the sort of faux pas question Giesler so accurately describes. Therefore a good ethnography conveys a holistic sense of daily routines extensive enough that a reader can infer how the particular data on which an author focuses fit into people’s ordinary activities.
Anthropologists also expect translation and its attendant problems to be in the foreground. This requirement entails that an ethnographer be familiar enough with the local language to put native terms into their contexts; for meaning is context. Just how true that linguists’ axiom is becomes clear when one is trying to learn an unwritten language in the absence of bilingual speakers. Getting imperfectly bi-lingual informants to give one a rough gloss produces a parodic pidgin whose in-adequacies may not at once be clear. I have argued elsewhere (Dentan, 1983c) that one reason for Stewart’s errors is that he failed to attend properly to conceptual categories in Temiar, a language which he did not speak. My correspondence with F&WL urged that they attend to such considerations. Giesler’s comment thus seems in the best tradition of constructive criticism, the cautionary suggestion made before a report assumes its final form. It is to be hoped that F&WL will address these issues.

Extensive Ethnographic Fieldwork on the Senoi

In fact, however, the conclusion that Stewart’s “Senoi dreamwork” bears little relation to what real-world Senoi, past or present, do or did, does not rest solely on the adequacy of F&WL’s field techniques. Ethnographers have done extensive Senoi fieldwork which does meet these criteria: Benjamin and Roseman with Temiar; Dentan, the Fixes, Gomes, Williams-Hunt and the Robarcheks with Semai. [Editor’s Note: The “Senoi” generic includes both Temiar and Semai peoples.] We were aware as early as the mid-1960’s that Stewart’s account of Senoi dreamwork was erroneous but were unaware of how widely it was to be disseminated. Such pro-fessional boundary-keeping and other interests kept us from publishing a detailed refutation until my short article, comment and monograph of last year (Dentan, 1983a,b,c), following our discovery of American-Senoi dreamwork. It’s a type case of the evils of professional specialization.
Nevertheless, anyone reading the voluminous literature on Senoi could have noticed that no mention of anything like “Senoi dream therapy” occurs. Moreover, in 1976 Peter Bloch visited Temiar and filmed their current dream praxis and found no trace of the complex Stewart described. Dreamworks disseminated this informa-tion informally, and a number of popular authors picked it up (Rainwater, 1979: 127). F&WL, however, point out that few dreamworkers paid any attention to Block’s discovery and the response followed the pattern F&WL quite properly condemn (see, e.g., Williams, 1980: 281; Randall, 1983; Garfield, quoted in Spiller, 1983: 7–8; cf. Dentan, 1983b, Faraday and Wren-Lewis, 1983; Howell, 1983).
Finally, ethnographic hermeneutics is tricky business; a wide range of interpre-tations are possible in many instances; but, if Giesler intends to suggest that, since disagreement is possible, anything goes, he would be mistaken. Factual statements like Stewart’s assertions that dream “clinics” occur or that Senoi talk about dreams in certain ways are “falsifiable” in the sense that it is possible to imagine events which would prove them false. To the extent that Stewart’s statements about Senoi dream praxis are falsifiable, F&WL, like their predecessors, have apparently found them false; and the interpretation F&WL have so far offered accords with the con-sensus of ethnographers. Stewart’s account, I think, resembles more his imaginative reconstruction of his communitarian, dream-based Mormon childhood (Stewart, 1954: 17, 20–21). Even the dream narratives in his doctoral dissertation do not match his generalizations about Senoi dreams (Stewart, 1948). Unconstrained by formal techniques, these mingled memories and desiresled him to see things that were not there. All the earlier evidence supports F&WL.
F&WL’s conclusions seem correct, then. Moreover, I endorse their condemna-tion of the defensive tactic of describing Senoi as a “mythic” people. Senoi are more real to me than are most American Senoi dream workers. I’ve laughed with Senoi, quarreled with some, hugged a few, carried dead Senoi babies to the grave. When the lives of weaker peoples become part of a powerful people’s mythology, it be-comes impossible to tell truth from fiction or fact from mythology.
Experts paint us as they would like us to be The American public feels most com-fortable with the mythical Indians of stereotype-land . . . To be an Indian in modern American society is . . . to be unreal and ahistorical (Deloria, 1970: 9–10; cf. 83–104).

References

Deloria, V. Jr. (1970). Custer died for your sins: An Indian manifesto. New York: Avon.

Dentan, R.K. (1983a). Senoi dream praxis. Dream Network Bulletin, 2(5), 1–3, 12.

Dentan, R.K. (1983b). Hit and run ethnograph [sic]: reply to Alexander Randall. Dream Net-work Bulletin, 2(8), 11–12.

Dentan, R.K. (1983c). A dream of Senoi. Council on International Studies, State University of New York at Buffalo, Special Study.

Faraday, A. & Wren-Lewis, J. (1983). Reply to Randall. Dream Network Bulletin 2(8), 10–11.

Firth, R. (1963). Elements of social organization. Boston: Beacon.

Howell, S. (1983). Kilton Stewart failed to understand what he saw. Dream Network Bulletin 2(11), 8.

Marcus, G.E. & Cushman, D. (1982). Ethnographies as texts. Annual Review of Anthropol-ogy, 11, 25–69.

Rainwater, J. (1979). You’re in charge! A guide to becoming your own therapist. Culver City, California: Peace Press.

Randall, A. (1983). The terrible truth of the Temiar Senoi. Dream Network Bulletin 2(2), 1–3.

Spiller, N. (1983). Children’s adventures in dreamland. CalToday, 2 October, 4–9.

Stewart, K.R. (1948). Magico-religious beliefs and practises in primitive society—A socio-logical interpretation of their therapeutic aspects. Doctoral thesis, London School of Economics.

Stewart, K.R. (1954). Pygmies and dream giants. New York: W.W. Norton.

Williams, S.K. (1980). Jungian-Senoi dreamwork manual. New revised expanded edition. Berkeley: Journey Press.

##### V.6 Overview of the Development of Lucid Dream Research in Germany

PAUL THOLEY

Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Germany

As in other countries there were various reports of lucid dreams recorded through the centuries by German philosophers, poets and occultists. But these, as well as the investigations carried out by serious researchers, were completely ignored by scientists because they were based on personal experiences (see Schriever, 1935; Moers-Messmer, 1939). It wasn’t until 1959 at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University that an effective technique for inducing lucid dreams was developed and the first systematic investigations involving several subjects took place. In this article I will discuss the beginnings of this research as well as its further development. Aside from the purely chronological ordering of the individual steps of the development of the research, I would also like to provide a basic outline of the inner connections of the particular areas within the overall research program. This will require analyzing the development of individual branches of research abstracted from their actual chronological order.
In Figure 1 the important areas of lucid dream research in their chronological and logical contexts are summarized. Clearly not all individual branches can be listed and many spheres can only be sketched. Those points which I already published in English will receive only brief mention. In this connection, I would like to point out that a much briefer version of this overview appeared in Lucidity Letter in June, 1988 (Tholey, 1988c). Unfortunately, only the first part of a more comprehensive abstract was translated and published at that time and more recent research was entirely omitted. Here I would like to speak to some of the research themes not mentioned at that time and especially to highlight two of the more current and somewhat related focal points of investigation: the different forms of lucidity and non-ordinary ego-experiences.

Epistemological Model of Critical Realism

First, I would like to treat in some detail the critical realistic model of the perceptual world, given its fundamental significance to the development of our lucid dream research program and the interpretation and application of our findings (see also Tholey, 1986b). This model postulates a distinction between the physical world (physical body and physical environment) and the phenomenal world (phenomenal body ego and phenomenal environment). In the waking state, the physical world is represented—more or less accurately—by sensory and memory processes in the brain. This was illustrated in a somewhat simplified way in the example of perception in my 1986(b) article (p. 45). It was a simplification because I didn’t make a strict distinction between the phenomenal facts and the brain correlates. In fact, we are inclined to adopt a view of psychophysical identity, isomorphism or parallelism. This is not a purely philosophical question, rather, it is a matter of working hypotheses which can be subjected to empirical testing and are not dependent on exact phenomenal/brain distinctions (for details see Tholey, 1980a; 1989c).
We most emphatically distinguish ourselves, however, from naďve-realistic conceptions (e.g., Gibson,1979) and from the idealistic and similar radical constructivist conceptions. The radical constructivists confuse the critical-phenomenal conception of the physical world with the physical world itself. The former is constructed on the basis of perception and thought, and frequently changes; whereas the latter obeys unchanging natural laws. A naďve-realistic model has especially negative consequences with respect to research and practice in the field of lucid dreaming and the related field of out-of-body experiences (OBEs). It not only hampers research, but for people who misinterpret such experiences it can have very dangerous consequences, possibly leading to serious mental disorders.
Just as the perceived world can provide us with information about physical reality despite the many deceptions and illusions, the dream world can present us with information about our psychological reality (the psychological person and his or her psychological situation), despite symbolic distortions. In general, we take the term “reality” to mean simply anything that has an effect. Accordingly, we understand psychological reality to mean the totality of that which can have an effect on our experience and behavior (see Lewin, 1936). This would especially include the so-called unconscious facts which we can conceptualize as psychological constructs and which can basically be replaced by physiological concepts at a later time.
Here we are in agreement with Freud that dreams are the “royal road” to the unconscious. But this is of little help when, in the orthodox psychoanalytic sense, normal dreams are experienced with a hazy consciousness and the absence of an ability to act. Or after waking when we report to a biased psychotherapist about our even more hazy and distorted observations and the associations connected to them.
In order to gain insight into our psychological problems and resolve them, it is much more important to interact with the symbolic world in a way enabled by lucid consciousness and the consequent greater freedom of action. Just as we can interact with physical reality in a waking state by means of the sensory-motor feedback system, we are capable of taking action in the psychological reality of lucid dreams due to the reciprocal reactions between the symbolic events and the underlying psychological processes. These fundamental principles have provided the basic underpinnings guiding our investigations into lucid dreaming. The results of the research have shown them to be extremely sound in practice.
But now let’s turn to the epistemological considerations described in the article written for Lucidity Letter in 1986, in which I focused exclusively on the process of perception. I also emphasized that it was an understanding of the critical realistic model which first brought me to the idea of developing a method for inducing lucid dreams, a method I will only briefly describe.

Techniques For Lucid Dream Induction - The Reflection Technique

When I recognized that the objective- and intersubjective-appearing perceptual world was merely a phenomenal world, it occurred to me to compare this phenomenal waking world with the dream world through systematic observation. The dream world is, in fact, a phenomenal world. But, being less dependent on sensory stimulation, it is possible for events to transpire which are not possible with normal perception in a waking state. Such unusual events made it possible for me to recognize the dreaming state.
On the basis of these ideas, I developed my first technique for inducing lucid dreams in 1959. I called itthe “Reflection Technique.” Using this technique, the subject asks him or herself several times during the course of the day: “Am I awake, or am I dreaming?” The purpose is to achieve a generally critical attitude towards one’s state of consciousness. When confronted with unusual experiences, this facilitates recognition of the dreaming state.
After four weeks I had my first lucid dream. I recognized that I was dreaming because I saw an aunt whom I knew to have been dead for some time. Since I wasn’t at all acquainted with such phenomena at that time, I was at first fascinated by this new experience. Later, however, I was seized by a kind of claustrophobic feeling because I didn’t know how or whether I would be able to get out of this dream world. I finally woke up after staring at a flower in the dream environment until the flower and the entire surroundings became blurred.
Price and Cohen (1988), who refer to only one of my articles translated into English, have referred to the reflection technique as the development of an active attitude. With respect to the early application of the technique this is correct. A process of active questioning, however, ultimately gives rise to a passively receptive focus on current experience which, in turn, makes the posing of critical questions a superfluous matter. In other words, increased practice helps develop the disposition making it possible to recognize the dreaming state when triggered by unusual events.
A first important goal in improving the effectiveness of the reflection technique was finding the appropriate criteria for recognizing the dreaming state. These criteria make it possible to spontaneously recognize that one is dreaming: particularities of dreamlike perception and/or the contradiction between knowledge of events in a waking state and momentarily experienced dream events. It is also possible to test whether one is awake or dreaming through a series of physical and mental activities. For example, the subject turns himself approximately 180 degrees and then attempts to stand still. In a dream state, as a rule, the body continues to turn in the same direction or the surroundings begin to revolve in the opposite direction. However, the subject may hesitate to conduct such a test in the presence of other people because of the possibility that he/she is awake. After all most of us shy away from carrying out such unusual activities in front of potential onlookers. Thus mental tests may be preferable.
One of the most effective tests is trying to remember what has happened during the immediately preceding period of time. Should one experience bizarre events or a lapse of memory, this may indicate that one is dreaming. However, this test is useless if the subject wakes up, since it could be a “false awakening.” Therefore, turning a light on, for example, is recommended upon waking up. If the light does not go on, this may signify a dream state.
We have found countless examples that suggest the apparent existence of various forms of psychological resistance which appear to hinder or prematurely end dream lucidity (Tholey, 1981; 1988b).
For instance during one of my own dreams I saw houses, trees and other objects all standing upside down. I immediately thought that I was dreaming. Shortly thereafter it seemed as if I had a pair of glasses on. It occurred to me that the glasses might have been equipped with reversing lenses such as those used in psychological experiments dealing with perception. When I proceeded to take off the glasses I saw my surroundings in a normal, upright position and I no longer believed I was dreaming. We have collected hundreds of such examples suggesting that various forms of psychological resistance apparently seek to hinder lucidity during dreaming.

The Expansion of the Lucid Dream Induction Technique

The expansion of the original reflection technique, resulting in the combined technique, was accomplished by incorporating elements of intention and auto-suggestion (Tholey, 1982; 1983b). Several researchers outside of our group have shown the effectiveness of our methods (Bouchet & Ripert, 1986; Levitan, 1989). Relatedly, a new combined technique developed by Klippstein (1988) should also be mentioned. We have recently attempted to isolate and investigate the effectiveness of certain factors within the overall technique (Utecht, 1987; Schlag, in preparation).
To understand the further development of our induction technique, it is important to point out that the actual clarity about one’s state of consciousness is not by itself a sufficient criterion for defining a lucid dream. Additional factors also have to be distinguished. To illustrate this we have listed six different criteria in Table 1 which are not only relevant to the dream state, but (all other conditions being equal) also to the waking state and various intermediate states as well—above all, the “state of imagery.” Consequently, during the further development of our induction technique, we have placed a high value on practicing as many aspects of lucidity as possible during the waking state so that they will be ready for application in the dream state.
Next we want to bring to the readers attention the second criterion of lucidity, “lucidity about individual freedom in decision and action.” We consider this aspect to be especially important because it is indispensable for experimentation in lucid dreaming and because the fulfillment of this criterion completely changes the quality of the dream. That is with the second aspect the other aspects of lucidity simultaneously appear, with the exception of the sixth aspect. The sixth aspect of lucidity can be practiced more easily in a “state of imagery” or in a state of waking fantasy (see also Malamud, 1979) than in a waking state, which is usually characterized by a lack of symbolic facts.
Our techniques are somewhat aimed at the same goal as Charles Tart in his book Waking Up (1986). Tart’s book is based on the teachings of Gurdjieff and assumes the validity of the hypothesis found in many older spiritual teachings that we are in a kind of psychological sleep or dream state, even during our waking hours. In metaphorical terms, Tart says that we have to pull up the weeds (transform unconsciousness into consciousness) in order to be able to enjoy the flowers. The techniques described by him are in reference to the waking state and include some which are similar to our methods (e.g., “self-observation” and “self-remembering”).
Our method, however, is more involved. As noted, we also begin with waking techniques. But, we want to arrive at lucidity in a dream state as quickly as possible because it is there that we can come face to face with Tart’s “weeds” in unadulterated forms. In this way we can directly confront the unconscious and thus free ourselves from it by a continuous feedback processes. Eventually, we hope to reach ever higher levels of lucidity in various states of consciousness.

Phenomenological Research on Lucid Dreams

Since, according to the critical realistic model, the phenomenal (waking or dream) world is the only immediately accessible world, empirical phenomenology (in the sense of the observation and description of phenomena) is indispensable for all sciences. The criteria of objectivity and intersubjectivity, which are often used to characterize a science, cannot be maintained, in a strict sense, by the critical realists because they can ultimately be established only through subjective means and thus one can be fundamentally in error. This can be confirmed by anyone who has considered himself to be in a waking state, while, in fact, he was dreaming. This is because the world in a dream state can have the same objective and intersubjective appearance as in a waking state. The possibility of making such afundamental error, however, does not mean that we have to adopt a completely skeptical position. Conviction does not always lead to objectively and intersubjectively valid observations, but it does so as a rule. Given that empirical phenomenology, by definition, does not seek to investigate objective facts, we demand only intersubjectivity as a criterion for something’s scientific character. Indeed, no single particular fact can be tested (e.g., that someone has dreamed in color at a particular time). But more general facts, such as the actual occurrence of dreaming in color, for example, can be subjected to testing (for details see Tholey, 1980b).
Experimental phenomenology was the basic and most often used method in our lucid dream research (for details see Tholey, 1986a). With this method, the researcher instructs the subjects or groups of subjects to carry out various specific activities during lucid dreaming, to observe their effects and record their observations independently of each other immediately upon awakening. For judging the subjects’ memory capabilities, it is important that they remember not only immediate phenomenal facts, but also the conclusions and judgements made about these facts (see Tholey, 1981). An interview technique developed by Reis (1989b), which is based on a detailed recording of dream experiences, allows for even more reliable and valid information on dream content than one normally finds with the usual analytical methods. With the help of phenomenological experiments, it is possible to test psychological hypotheses about functional dependencies on phenomenal facts, as well as psychophysiological hypotheses about the relationships between phenomenal and physiological facts.
Objections to the control of dreams have recently emerged in the lucid dream literature. To these objections we can only reply that in our research and clinical work, we have obtained numerous results through the control of dreams making it possible for us to help many people. The subjects of pilot studies always participate voluntarily in our investigations and were always made aware of potential dangers. It is also understandable that the content of our subjects’ lucid dreams would differ extensively from the reports of spontaneous lucid dreamers. Above all, our experimental-phenomenological findings are distinguished from the results obtained by an analysis of spontaneous lucid dreams by a significantly greater diversity of experiential possibilities.

Phenomenological Research in Dream Perception and Cognition

In these experiments we tested a vast number of hypotheses in the area of perception and cognition during lucid dreaming which I have lectured on in detail since 1973 and which, in part, are only to be found in the unpublished reports and dissertations of my students. From among my German publications, I would highlight my review article of 1981.
The phenomenological experiments on perception were first modeled on the usual perceptual experiments in the waking state. We determined if double images, after images and reversible phenomena appeared during lucid dreams under appropriate conditions. These experiments also helped in identifying criterion for distinguishing between a waking and a dream state (see above). We found that all of these phenomena were sometimes, if not always, observed. Although we can frequently recognize the fact that we are dreaming, thirty years of research has still not given us an absolutely reliable test for determining this. This applies especially to the most effective dream criteria discussed earlier.
During lucid dreaming we can sometimes consciously produce perceptual phenomena which differ completely from perception in a waking state—for ex-ample, a panoramic field of vision extending 360 degrees in both horizontal and vertical directions. In general, this has occurred only when the dream-egowas in an asomatic or disembodied state (see below). We also succeeded in deliberately defying gravity and slowing down or speeding up time through the use of various techniques (see Tholey & Utecht, 1989).
In the area of memory, we discovered that subjects in a lucid dream state could not only remember their waking state but also their previous dreams. We were able to establish this by comparing the notes recorded after their earlier dreams. The latter is most assuredly connected to the problem of state-specific memory. Long-term memory appears to function somewhat better than short-term memory during lucid dreaming.
In the sphere of logical thinking, we found that the dream-ego was capable of solving double-digit multiplication tasks. In addition, some subjects were able to solve problems of logic which they had unsuccessfully attempted prior to going to sleep. Artistic creative ability was also shown in varying areas, especially during hypnagogic dream phases (Lirzer, 1981).
The abilities of other dream characters were also examined in a way similar to the abilities of the dream-ego. We saw that the cognitive and artistic performance of other dream figures equaled or surpassed that of the dream-ego, but were less capable of solving arithmetic problems (Krist, 1981; Tholey, 1985; 1989a).

Phenomenological Research on Dream Figure Interactions

We devoted a great deal of attention to the “internal” (emotional and motivational) and “external” (verbal and behavioral) activities of the dream-ego during interaction with other dream figures (Tholey, 1981; 1982; 1984; 1988b). We found that in general, positive effects on both the dream and waking life of the dreamer accompanied interactions of a peaceful nature. With regard to this, we mainly want to make some comments which supplement already published material (see especially the English article, Tholey, 1988b).
We have indicated that some of the dream characters form sub-systems of the personality. Even though exact distinctions are not necessarily possible, these sub-systems can be of a more inner-personal or psycho-social nature, on the one hand, or of a more habitual or immediate nature, on the other. We have previously pointed out that dream characters can be altered through changes in our emotional attitude and that we can even create other dream characters.
For example, when I am angry or afraid in a dream, I can blow out the anger or fear through my mouth and thereby create a dream character which takes on an appearance corresponding to the emotion. An indirect way of creating dream characters consists in taking certain actions which trigger strong emotions, such as a guilty conscience. Aggressive actions in dreams are frequently met with punishment meted out by avenging figures. One of my own dreams illustrates this:
I knocked down a dream figure in an enclosed room in order to see if I would be punished. I was seized by the feeling that I would be confronted with something un-pleasant, as had happened in previous cases. Tense, but calm, I waited a moment. But nothing happened. Inwardly triumphant, I then wanted to leave the room. There, before the door, stood a huge person with a hood over his head who immediately lunged at me causing [me] great fear.
Whether such figures appear or not (above all, in response to socially taboo actions of an aggressive or sexual nature), varies from subject to subject. This seems to offer proof that the appearance and possible changes of the other dream characters is dependent on the dreamer’s current emotional state, while thisemotional state, however, is dependent on the habitual attitudes or sub-systems of the personality.
Learning processes probably play a large role in communication with other dream characters.
Inexperienced lucid dreamers frequently have difficulty conducting a rational dialogue with other dream figures. This is because most of these figures play word games involving hidden or multiple meanings which the dream-ego can not initially understand. Thus, it is not surprising that the dream-ego considers the other dream figures speech to be pure nonsense—although it can later often be shown to have a logical meaning.

Phenomenological Research on the Lucidity of Dream Characters

In addition to the lucidity of the dream-ego, the “lucidity” of the other dream characters also plays an important role in their communication. In order to avoid misunderstanding, we can never empirically prove whether or not other dream characters are lucid, only that they speak and behave as if they were. Elsewhere I have argued that many dream figures seem to perform with a “consciousness” of what they are doing (Tholey, 1985; 1989a). Some of our unpublished work on the lucidity of other dream figures (in the sense just described) includes examples which seem to indicate that the dream-ego becomes lucid first. This is followed by the other dream figures attaining lucidity. On the other hand, we have many examples of reverse order. We can illustrate this by means of an example in which another dream character not only becomes lucid before the dream-ego, he also possesses a higher degree of lucidity than the dream-ego later achieves. This abbreviated form of the dream was reported by a woman and can be found in Reis (1989b):
I dreamed that I had forced myself through a grey and slimy mass. I didn’t know then and I still don’t know what it was. It was unpleasant, but for some reason I had to force myself through it in order to advance further. Then, in the midst of this grey slime, I came to a brightly lit place with a person standing in the center. I could see that it was Mr. Spock, the scientist of the Enterprise (the spaceship of the television series Star Trek). He told me, “There is no reason to worry because you are dreaming!” I did not believe him and I asked him what it was that I had just passed through. He answered that I had just passed through my own brain, or my own mind. I did not believe him, but he knew so much more than I did and he told me he would jump up and then remain in mid-air, just so that I would be able to see that we were part of a dream. Only after this actually took place was I convinced that I was in a dream. Then I said that I would never have found out by myself that I was dreaming. He replied that he knew that and that was why he was there. He also said that he knew much more than me anyway and that was the way it should be right then. He explained the meaning of my path in a very plausible manner He also explained why it was not necessary to know all this right from the start and that he only explained it later on so that I wouldn’t be afraid anymore. Anyway, he told me all kinds of things and showed me things that I did not believe right away. I think it was great to have someone acting in a dream who knew much more than I did.
The dream character of Mr. Spock may be characterized as standing for the so-called internal self-helper (ISH) who gives important advice to the dreamer for her dream and daily lives. Our previous findings suggest that one can arrange a meeting with an ISH by means of a suitable pre-sleep suggestion. While lucid dreaming, one can also arrange meetings with the ISH for a dream in the future.
One often finds an ISH at a place which is difficult to reach and which can be brightly lit (as in the example with Mr. Spock), or which is situated high up. There are examples in which one has to climb to the top of a mountain where one meets an ISH who calls himself a monk, a guru, or possibly a psychotherapist. Others pass themselves off as guardian angels or helpful ghosts (for an example, see Tholey 1984). We also have examples of cases where an ISH knows certain things from the dreamers past - things which the dreamer himself is not aware of even after waking up, but which further investigation has shown to be true. Suitable phenomenological experiments are necessary to achievefurther clarification concerning this important component of lucid dreaming.
In view of the fact that literature in the field of lucid dreaming almost exclusively refers to the lucidity of the dream ego, we have, in fact, consciously chosen an example in which the other dream character becomes lucid earlier than the dream-ego and is superior to it. Naturally, there are many other examples in which the reverse is true. In such cases it is helpful if the dream-ego tries to convince the other dream characters that they are in a dream. The quality of the dream can then change completely and communication between the dream characters can take place which may lead to much greater insight than is found in the typical lucid dream. For this reason we consider the “lucidity” of all dream characters (see item II.7 in Table 1) to be a higher form of lucidity. The verbal, or possibly even “telepathic,” communication no longer takes place on a symbolic, but rather on a direct level. It has already been possible to confirm this in preliminary phenomenological experiments. I have recently (Tholey, 1989a) indicated that it was possible to enter the body of another dream character with the ego-core and, in this way, gain more information than was possible with normal verbal communication.

Techniques for Ending, Prolonging and Manipulating Lucid Dreams

We can draw a whole series of practical conclusions about the ending, prolonging and manipulation of lucid dreams from the results of our phenomenological experiments. Just as a dream can be ended by fixing a gaze, a lucid dream can be prolonged when it threatens to end by rapid eye or body movements. As we have already dealt extensively with the possibilities and limits of manipulating lucid dreams (Tholey, 1988), we will only briefly comment.
The control of a dream through the dream-ego’s action in the dream world (similar to the waking-ego’s actions in the waking world) is not what we mean by manipulation. Rather, we mean intervention in the dream world which would more likely be considered a supernatural occurrence in a waking state; e.g., journeys into the past, transformation of the dream-ego or dream scenery, etc. Just as lucid dreaming has been associated with defense mechanisms, so too has dream manipulation been thought to be a kind of defense mechanism. Lucidity can, indeed, be used in the sense of a defense mechanism for escaping problems and conflicts. But, on the other hand, it also offers the unique opportunity (not possible in normal dreams) to face personal problems and conflicts, to confront threatening people and situations and even to seek them out, rather than fleeing from them (see Tholey, 1988b).

Phenomenological Research on Hypnopompic Phenomena

The fact that lucid dreams can usually be ended by fixing one’s vision on a stationary spot makes it possible to closely observe the phenomena which appear during the transition to a waking state. Given that we have already dealt with such phenomena in an earlier article (1981), we will limit our remarks here to a few observations connected with bodily experiences which provide some important background for the remainder of this article.
Only one body was experienced during the transition from the dreaming to the waking state. Of special interest to us here was how the transition took place from an upright, standing dream body to a horizontally lying waking body. This transition is never experienced as the dream body falling into a horizontal position. Instead, there is a sudden change of the spatial reference system. This is comparable, while awake, to when a person wants to go to the door of a completely dark room and suddenly discovers he is at the opposite side of the room. In this case, it is only the sudden change of the spatial reference system (constituted by the room) which is experienced, not the changing of the position of the bodythrough turning and shifting. In further experiments, we tested to see what happens during the transition from a dream to a waking state when the dream body is consciously situated in a way not common during sleeping, e.g., the head and torso bent forward and almost touching the knees, or the arms and legs extended in a spread eagle fashion. Neither a straightening of the body in the first case, nor the drawing in of the limbs in the second case, is actually experienced during waking. Rather, before waking, the body loses its clear contours and sometimes its solid character. We have applied the metaphorical term “cloud-like ego” to such an occurrence. Upon fully awakening this “cloud-like ego” stabilizes into a solid body ego with definitely defined contours and is experienced as lying in bed.
A dream ego and a waking ego have also been experienced simultaneously. For example, the dream body gradually faded out (as in a film), while the waking body became more and more clear. The dream body slipping into the waking body was also experienced, particularly during flying dreams. When a cloud-like ego or a disembodied ego was experienced, it also frequently slipped into the waking body. Occasionally the body was not immediately mobile upon waking, a situation which was very unpleasant for inexperienced lucid dreamers. Practiced dreamers, on the other hand, use this condition to return to a lucid dream state (see Tholey, 1989c).

Hypnagogic Techniques for Inducing Lucid Dreams and OBEs

The above-mentioned hypnopompic experiences were used to develop hypnagogic induction techniques which were then employed in an effort to reverse the above sequence. This sometimes occurs as quickly as with the reversing of a reversible figure. We have already outlined other hypnagogic techniques in some of our earlier articles (Tholey, 1982; 1983a) and later described them in more detail and illustrated them with suitable examples (Tholey, 1989c). In many respects, I personally consider the hypnagogic induction techniques to be more appropriate for advanced subjects than other techniques because they allow lucid dreams to be

1. Attained at a particular time;

2. Prolonged easily; and

3. Resumed after short interruptions.

Finally, only hypnagogic techniques made possible a 24-hour period of lucidity that included the total sleeping state (see item II.8 in Table 1). Indeed, only a few people have succeeded in accomplishing this in our experiments. I have personally twice experienced 24 hours of lucidity with approximately a five-hour period spent in a total sleeping state. EMG measurements showed that my muscular system was completely relaxed during this time. Upon awakening I showed no signs of either physical or mental fatigue. A feedback relationship seems to exist between sleeping state lucidity and waking state lucidity.
So-called OBEs of the most varied sort frequently arise with the application of hypnagogic techniques. In the following section we will deal with them in more detail from both the conceptual and phenomenological points of view.

Phenomenological Research on Non-ordinary Ego Experiences

For the description of non-ordinary ego-experiences we want to explain certain terms in more detail (including some already used), and also introduce some new ones. This is not easy given that many phenomenological distinctions which are made in the German language can only be expressed in Englishby employing metaphorical language. In addition, many terms are used ambiguously. We are thinking of such terms as “ego,” “I,” “me,” “self,” etc. Sometimes the term “ego” indicates a part or sub-system of the personality (e.g., in psychoanalysis). By contrast, we attach a phenomenological meaning to this term, as well as the others, in the following discussion.
By the expression “total self” we mean the phenomenal “body-soul unity” of a subject which comprehends the subject’s phenomenal body (in our terminology, the body-ego) as well as mental facts (in a narrow sense)—above all, the emotions and motivations of the subject. These mental facts frequently appear to be bound up with the body in a fuzzy way as a kind of vessel. They can also transcend the phenomenal body. One thinks, for example, of love or hate with their characteristic connections to other subjects.
There is a particular point within the total-self, however, which is sometimes referred to as the “center of the self,” “center of consciousness,” or “center of the ego.” “Ego in a narrower sense” or something similar is also used (for details see Kohler, 1938, p. 188) Due to the ambiguity of these terms, we prefer the expression “ego-core,” in accordance with the German term Ichkern. The ego-core is less an extended part of the phenomenal field than it is a place or point in the phenomenal world determined by its position and functions. Let’s first consider its position in the usual waking condition.
This point can be localized surprisingly well during normal observing or thinking. It is located within the phenomenal body, namely in the frontal area of the phenomenal head, a short distance behind the bridge of the nose. Many authors claim that the ego-core (or whatever term they prefer for this concept) is located behind the eyes. But in the phenomenological sense this is wrong because in the phenomenal world we only see by means of a single eye. (The physiologist Hering had described it as the “cyclopean eye” in the 19th century.) This eye includes the frontal area of the phenomenal head. Based on that, we can also say that the ego-core is located behind the center of this cyclopean eye. To avoid any misunderstanding, it should be emphasized that this localization of the ego-core only concerns the phenomenal head, not the physical head of the physical organism. Beyond that, the ego-core should not be confused with either a fictitious homunculus (which suggests information), or with an idealistic epistemological subject which creates or constructs the world. The terms “homunculus” and “epistemological ego” are metaphysical concepts which have no meaning from the standpoint of critical realism (see earlier discussion). The ego-core can experience phenomenal objects and participate in phenomenal events, above all through visual perception (in a phenomenological sense), imagination, memory and thought. As a rule, the ego-core is also the phenomenal origin of voluntary activities, including voluntarily focusing attention.
We would consider all experiences which deviate from the described phenomenal facts to be non-ordinary ego-experiences. In such situations, for example, the ego-core can change its position in the phenomenal body or leave the phenomenal body (as with so-called OBEs), slip into other phenomenal bodies, duplicate itself, or completely disappear. In addition, the described functions of the ego-core can distribute themselves in various places. There are so many non-usual ego-experiences that we can only consider a few of them.
During lucid dreaming, it is possible to experience one’s own body or the body-ego in extremely diverse ways—especially OBEs. We consider OBEs to be experiences during which a second body or a disembodied ego (in our terminology: the ego-point) leaves the first (experienced as physical) phenomenal body (Tholey, 1966c). The first body is frequently experienced as immobile or rigid; thesecond as mobile. As a rule, the ego-core is to be found in the latter. The second body can have the same distinct contours as the first, or it can be a “cloud-like body.” The second body can also usually pass through solid objects, such as walls. In rarer cases, the second body is tied to the first body by a kind of cord. What we have described here is interpreted differently and described in other terms by occultist literature. Table 2 shows a rough outline of the differences between the anthroposophical concepts of Rudolf Steiner and our own.
Naturally, there is also a physical body or organism within the framework of critical realism. It isn’t, however, immediately experienced. In occultist literature, the cord between the first and second bodies is also called the silver cord; its destruction is supposed to lead to death (see e.g., Fox 1962).

Research on OBEs

Most investigations of non-ordinary ego-experiences refer to OBEs. We have already pointed out the hypnagogic techniques which were used most of the time in our OBE induction experiments. During lucid dreams we can also induce OBEs in various ways (for details see Tholey, 1989c). Finally, we have also used various mirror techniques for the induction of OBEs which are more or less patterned after magical practices [Editor’s Note: More on these in the discussion between Tholey and LaBerge in the June, 1990 issue of Lucidity Letter]. The first successful investigation of a mirror technique in our research at Frankfurt University was by Stich (1983; 1989). A method I developed involving two mirrors has been described by Nossack (1989).
An important goal of our phenomenal experiments was to determine whether the same functional dependencies between phenomenal facts are to be found in an OBE state and in a lucid dream state. Aside from the beginning phase directly following the induction of these states of consciousness, we found no substantial differences. In particular, we tried to find techniques for prolonging, manipulating and ending OBEs which were similar to those used during lucid dreams.
Interestingly enough, it was possible for a subject (as an ego-point) to end a dream by staring at his or her own (experienced as physical) phenomenal body still lying in bed (Stich, 1983). This body would begin to become blurred in the same way as a particular point in the dream scenery of a lucid dream. With regard to manipulation, it was possible for practiced subjects to arbitrarily give the second body (in occultist terminology: the astral body) first a solid quality and then a subtle quality. In this way, the subject could pass through walls at will. The so-called astral body could also be transformed into animals and plants, among other things. The so-called silver cord could be cut (without harmful results), although this was a fairly rare event (see Tholey, 1989c). All of the findings of our phenomenological Experiments (especially the blurring of the seemingly physical body and the arbitrary transformation processes of the second body) indicate that OBEs are merely a particular form of lucid dreams, with the possible exception of OBEs occurring during a waking state (e.g., during the practicing of certain sports—see Tholey, 1989c).
And now a final important observation in this area, which was also described by Schriever (1935) vis-ŕ-vis lucid dreaming. If the ego-core is actually a pure point of view from which one’s own body can be observed, it is also true that particular exertions and pain in this body can be felt as neutral events without affecting the ego-core. Through practice, some people are able to transfer this ability to a waking state in which the ego-core is found in the phenomenal head, i.e., not outside the body. It might even be possible for these people to be operated on without anaesthesia.

Entering the Body of Other Dream Characters with the Ego-core

The previously mentioned mirror techniques can be used as a helpful preliminary exercise for entering the body of another dream character with the ego-core. In the hypnagogic state, however, one can use imagined mirrors in order to enter one’s own imagine in the mirror (Muldoon & Carrington, 1974; Hillman, 1985). In this state, the “image-ego-point technique” for inducing lucid dreams (Tholey, 1983a, p. 85) can also be used for entering the body of a dream character.
When entering the body of a particular dream character with the ego-core, it is advantageous to look directly at the dream character. The ego-core is often very quickly transported along the line of sight towards and into the body of the dream character. Naturally there are still several phenomenological experiments to be carried out to clarify the effectiveness of particular techniques for this process.
We would like to illustrate this process with two examples. In the first, the subject (an artist) used the above mentioned “image-ego-point technique” for inducing a lucid dream in a hypnagogic state. Even though he had never experienced a lucid dream before, he had the following experience the first night after being instructed in this technique:
I paid attention to visual phenomena while falling asleep. I got to the point where I could see a complete scene even though I was still lying in bed as a spectator, not as an actor. Several Indians were kind of hanging out on the beach. Among them was a friendly boy whom I selected in order to enter his body. I quickly succeeded in “riding on” my line of sight to him. Immediately afterwards I started to see the beach through the boy’s eyes; I heard the ocean waves beating against the shore through his ears; I moved with the boy’s body. Shortly afterwards, my ego left the boy’s body, shot up and then floated above the beach. I thought to myself: ‘It did not quite work out yet.’ Then my ego slipped into the body lying in bed.
Another example is provided by a student who had already had many experiences with the mentioned mirror technique. His ego-core entered the bodies of several other dream characters, but he became lucid only at the end of the dream:
I am dreaming that I am married and have a daughter (neither of which was actually true). First, I see the kid playing around and I am very proud of her. Later on, I am lying in bed (person A = dreamer) with my wife (person B). She tells me that we have to separate. I am stunned by that. She leaves and my ego enters her (person B) at that moment. After some time has passed, I (still person B) conclude that I (person A) am not that bad a person after all and I (person B) decide to return to myself (person A). I find myself (person A) in bed with a stranger, a man (person C), and I (person B) get extremely mad and jealous. I (person B) accuse myself (person A) of being a “queer son-of-a-bitch.” Then my ego slips out of person B and into person C, and now, being person C, I explain to person B why it is all right this way and succeed in convincing B of this. Finally, all three of us are lying in bed making love. I leave all three of them at the moment I am no longer sure which one of them I actually am and then discover that I am sleeping because everything seems so dreamlike. Seeing that, I explain to them (the three people) that I am dreaming and that they are all parts of myself. They turn around, looking at me sheepishly and unbelievingly. Wondering how I manage to talk even though my ego has no body at all, I wake up.
The dreamer interpreted the dream as a psychological conflict in which the ego-core took over the various sub-systems of his personality. While this dream obviously symbolized an internal psychological conflict, we also have examples of psychosocial conflicts being clarified and resolved by entering the body of another dream character (for a detailed example, see Tholey, 1988b, pp. 283–284). Indeed, it is not always possible to make a strict distinction between these two kinds of conflicts because of their closely interrelated nature.

Dream Ego Duplication

The following technique for duplicating the dream ego was developed by psychotherapist Norbert Sattler. He discovered that it is possible to not only pass into another dream character over the line of sight, but that a person can be transported to a different place entirely. The following example from Sattler explains how the dream ego can be duplicated at the same time as this transporting takes place.
Standing in front of a high tower during a lucid dream, I clearly experienced the tower’s power. This gave rise to a desire to look down from it. I accomplished this by gliding in desultory fashion to the top of the tower along my line of sight. I then looked downwards and was overcome by a feeling of dizziness. In a similar way as before, I changed my perspective several times until I seemed to be standing on top of the tower and at its base at the same time, while simultaneously looking upwards and downwards. In this way, I experienced the power of the high tower and the dizziness caused by the long vertical drop in one conflicting moment.
A second method, which I developed, for dream ego duplication consisted in cutting one’s body into right and left halves (see also the following discussion for the more general method of severing body parts). The two halves can then complete themselves into two dream bodies with differing points of view. As a rule, this method can only be applied successfully by experienced lucid dreamers and the phenomena are generally of an unstable nature. In this connection, it should be noted that the dream-ego, according to Chang (1963), can be “multiplied into millions and billions to fill the entire cosmos” (our terminology: the total dream world).

Movement of the Ego-core Within the Dream Body

The above mentioned technique for dividing the dream body into two halves is patterned after a more general technique developed by Norbert Sattler (see preceding section) for cutting through or cutting off various parts of the dream body with a knife. With this method, pain can be felt and resistance can be encountered if the subject hasn’t learned to transform the solid dream body into a subtle body. The ego-core also becomes mobile by means of cuts made through the head and can be moved arbitrarily within the uninjured dream body with further practice. In this way, it can inspect the entire dream body and internal organs much like the Guided Affective Imagery (GAI) technique described by Leuner (1978). This could ultimately be of great significance for the diagnosis and treatment of psychosomatic illness.

Destruction of the Dream Ego

If a subject not only severs various parts of the body, but also tries to completely cut it up into pieces, burn it up or destroy it by other means, then the dream body as well as the dream ego-core disappear. This is similar to the techniques used by shamans (e.g., see Kalweit, 1984) who are considered by many researchers to be pioneers in consciousness research. The vanishing of the ego-core can lead to different states of consciousness. Relatedly, Dittrich (1985) argues, on the basis of factor analysis of numerous experiments, that there are only three main dimensions (independently of pharmacological and psychological causes) within the various forms of altered states of consciousness:

1. Oceanic self-boundlessness;

2. Anxious ego dissolution; and

3. Visionary restructuring.

As a rule, only hallucinatory events take place during a lucid dream. Whether the vanishing of the ego is accompanied by peak experiences of type 1, or unpleasant, fearful experiences of type 2 depends, above all, on the subject’s epistemological point of view and the emotional attitude flowing from it. Otherwise, we see no decisive difference between these forms of experience. Those of the first type were the only ones encountered by our experienced lucid dreamers who carried out the experiments without any anxiety or fear. They can sometimes be described as cosmic experiences with a holographic structure in which the self and the (phenomenal) cosmos form a single unit.

The Evolution of Consciousness

A series of phenomenologically differentiated experiences can be distinguished in which the opposition of the ego (or self) to the world is eliminated. This is discussed in chapter 10, “The Evolving Soul,” of Gackenbach and Bosveld’s Control Your Dreams (1989).
We are of the opinion that such peak experiences, above all in the Indian culture and subsequently in many western cultures, are too dependent on meditation techniques and frequently lead to a passive condition marked by withdrawal from the world. But similar states can also be reached while physiologically awake. Numerous Japanese Zen Buddhists, whose outlook is close to German Gestalt theory, are able to reach such states of consciousness by means of the “outer way”; for example, through artistic or physical exercises. Zen Buddhist philosophers (see Izutsu, 1986, p. 35) also speak of a “supra-consciousness.” In both Zen Buddhism and Gestalt theory (which is itself supported by countless empirical investigations), the vanishing of the ego (or at least its receding into the background) is the most important prerequisite for unprejudiced perception, productive thinking, free and creative action. Given, however, that we adopt an egocentric attitude as part of growing up in our western culture, the road to creative freedom is not easy. By eliminating certain impediments in the form of psychological resistance or defense mechanisms, lucid dreaming can provide a key to the successful traversing of this road (for details see Tholey, 1989c). It is not possible to describe this road in more detail within the context of this article; nor the many diverse applications which we have only been able to touch upon.
In conclusion we would like to point out that reaching creative freedom in perception, thinking, and artistic or scientific activity, shares a similarity to “enlightening” or “waking up” from the robot-like sleep of our day to day existence as described by Tart (1986). But we are also of the opinion that there is a lot of investigative work remaining. We have merely made a single excursion from which it is only possible to point out new research perspectives, rather than report final conclusions.

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##### V.7 Interview with Celia Green, Author of the 1968 Classic, Lucid Dreams

CELIA GREEN and JAYNE GACKENBACH

Institute of Psychophysical Research, Oxford, England; Athabasca University and University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Gackenbach: When did you become interested in lucid dreaming and how were other people instrumental in the cultivation of your interest?

Green: I first became aware of lucid dreams when I was writing my Oxford post-graduate thesis on unusual states of consciousness with Professor H.H. Price as my supervisor. I was aware of them from the start as something that was closely related to OBE. They were just one among a very wide range of special states which I included in my thesis. I knew one or two people who had had quite a number, but they were not talked about much in those days.
I found when I talked to academics and experts on sleep and dreaming that there seemed to arise in them some profound resistance. It was very difficult to get anyone to talk coherently about them, even if they did not flatly deny the possibility and assert that if people knew they were dreaming and could think fairly rationally, they really must have been awake. With the more ostensibly tolerant people who open-mindedly accepted my description of what a lucid dream was, I then found that within a few sentences they seemed to have forgotten the definition and muddled lucidity up with something different. They started to talk as if what was being discussed was precognitive dreams or narrative dreams or something else. This started to give me a kind of idea that lucid dreams must cut across some quite important implicit assumptions of their world-view, although they did not cut across anything in mine and seemed only a mildly interesting variant of possible experience.
When I was quite young, in my teens, I had formulated the idea that the greatest advances in science arise where there has been resistance to progress. This is not so much due to the intrinsic intellectual difficulty, but rather the fact that it might threaten the current ideology, whatever it might be. Most of the research which is done is determined by the requirement that it shall, in a fairly obvious and predictable way, reinforce the approved or fashionable theories. This does not mean that the research that is done is exactly wrong, only that a great deal of research that might be done is discriminated against, and the reasons for this are not explicitly stated. Lucid dreams provide a good example. People did not go around saying “I dislike the idea of lucid dreams because “ It was simply very difficult to talk to about lucidity.

Gackenbach: Why did you write your book Lucid Dreams? How did it come about and what do you think of the response to it?

Green: The first book on lucid dreams was written as a companion volume to our book on out-of-body experiences (OBEs). When we founded the Institute we were dependent on obtaining financial support,and we thought the best way of finding it was to start doing what work we could, albeit on a very small and restricted scale. After a few years we were lucky to obtain the support of our first really wealthy benefactor (and still unfortunately our only substantial one), who was Cecil Harmsworth King, the late newspaper magnate. In many ways he was an ideal supporter. He did not try to dictate at all what we should do with his money, and that was really very lucky, particularly as so many of the areas we were opening up were so uncharted. It would have been difficult to convince anyone else that a particular thing was worth doing. In many ways our work was quite speculative, even to us! For example, when we made our public appeal for OBE cases we had no idea whether we would receive any useful responses. Now it is pretty well established that such appeals receive a substantial and fairly consistent response.
Part of Cecil King’s approach, which made him so congenial a sponsor, was that he regarded his giving us a certain level of financial support for seven years as “priming the pump.” He saw that there was scope for a much larger scale of research than we could do even with his money. King thought he was providing us with the opportunity to demonstrate that there were previously neglected areas where research could be done and also that we at the Institute had the ability to do it. He hoped that this initial work which he was financing would lead to an increasing flow of financial support to the Institute. So we used the money for what we regarded as sighting shots or pilot investigations in as many different fields as possible, and these included lucid dreams as well as OBEs and apparitions.
As it turned out, his hope about priming the pump was scarcely fulfilled so far as the financial response was concerned. Since the end of the seven year covenant we have not had financial support to speak of. Thus it has been an effort to keep the Institute in existence and to maintain some level of contact with the fields of research which we have opened up.
I couldn’t say that I foresaw that Lucid Dreams would be the best received of our books. Now that it has happened, I suppose one can see that it is particularly easy for research on lucid dreams to be expanded because lucid dreams have the rather unique attribute that they are fairly easy for people to develop. It is easy to train subjects for laboratory work and also for people who are interested in developing their lucid dreams. No other metachoric experience is so readily trainable. It is difficult to study apparitions or waking dreams except from the reports of those who have had spontaneous experiences of them. In studying OBEs in the laboratory you are to a large extent limited to subjects who happen to have a particular aptitude for them, and who may be a special class.

Gackenbach: What do you consider the relationship between lucid dreams and OBEs? Are they the same? How so or how not?

Green: All metachoric experiences have obvious similarities in that they provide a person with a substitute environment which entirely replaces the physical world as normally perceived. In all cases it can be strikingly realistic as an imitation of normal perception, and in all metachoric experiences, except lucid dreams, it can be entered with no perceptible discontinuity in the subject’s perceptual experience. Lucid dreams and OBEs seem to be more closely related than other metachoric experiences because a very positive emotionality is reported in connection with both types, with feelings of liberation and an exploratory curiosity. This is not found to the same extent with apparitions or waking dreams.
Other reasons for supposing them to be related are that some habitual subjects have had techniques for transferring themselves from a lucid dreaming state to an OBE one, or at least believed they had. Also, intermediate experiences are reported which are not easily classified as one thing or the other.
On the other hand, there are certain statistical differences. The majority of lucid dreams start from normal sleep, and the majority of OBEs from a normal waking state or, at least as they are reported, from a state of physical unconsciousness caused by anaesthesia or accident. In a way it is not too helpful to set oneself the question whether they are the same or different. You could certainly set up a definition which would include everything one would like to regard as a lucid dream and exclude what one thinks of as OBEs, and vice versa. For myself, I tend to think of these things as a continuum with clusters of characteristics which correspond to various typical forms. The most typical lucid dream is certainly different in some respect from the most typical OBE. The OBE usually commences in a way that is apparently continuous with the subject’s environment, but is more likely to develop in a way that includes spectacular “traveling,” e.g. intercontinental, or back into the past. On the other hand the most typical lucid dream provides a convincing imitation of physical reality but not of any location particularly well known to the dreamer, and is less likely to include “traveling” which is regarded as long distance, although flying is fairly common. There are, of course, a number of other similarities and differences, which we can only continue to study.

Gackenbach: What is the cause or source of metachoric experiences?

Green: I think the answer to this probably depends on the relationship of metachoric experiences to normal perception, and part of the answer may be that they don’t require much to be triggered.
Students of perception have for a long time accepted the idea of an ordinary hallucination, by which they meant some extraneous image superimposed on what was being perceived in the normal way, but hallucinations of even this kind were regrettably seldom studied. There was, and still is, a prevalent attitude that we only want to know about normality, and if a thing is associated with mental illness, that is good enough to write it off. However, one can take the view that studying extreme and unusual cases could very well give us insights into the mechanisms of normal perception.
You have to realize that the concept of metachoric experiences, and the recognition that a person can enter a substitute environment without realizing that a discontinuity has taken place, is really quite recent. There now seem to be several different characteristic types, and they seem to be a fairly constant part of normal human experience. I think of them as forming a continuum, because you can find intermediate forms which are not easy to classify. We should also be aware that there may be sub-classes which might have different clusters of characteristics. As one studies these phenomena one is constantly having reported to one quite small and dull experiences which people have had, which might not be memorable enough for them to send in response to an appeal, nor perhaps even remembered if they are answering a yes/no questionnaire. So I think the first part of an explanation of metachoric experiences may be that the metachoric mode is really quite close to that of normal perception. It does not take that much for a person to flip into it for a short time, although it seems very likely that there are individual differences which facilitate it. A fair proportion of OBEs (that is, the dramatic type of OBEs which people tend to report in response to appeals) are associated with obviously traumatic and life-threatening situations. We must mention that a considerable proportion of these, as reported, seem to occur while the subject is actually unconscious as a result of the accident or anaesthetic. Furthermore, we should make a distinction, or at least be aware that there may be a distinction, between those that happen in a highly stressed state of waking consciousness and those that happen when the physical body is completely knocked out for normal purposes, although both of these situations may be viewed as stressful. Thus it appears that high arousal can be a trigger to set off the metachoric mode. But fairly clearly, individual differences play a part in determining whether the trigger works in this way because there is no kind oftraumatic experience that can be confidently expected to produce an OBE in everyone.
OBEs are probably the most dramatic in appearance of the metachoric experiences, and they happen in a very wide variety of circumstances. There is a definite group which happens in situations which you might expect to be fairly high in arousal, but they would not normally be excessively stressful, though you would expect a person to be adrenalised. Examples are a person giving a lecture, a dentist extracting a tooth, a person taking a driving test or getting married. We have cases of people watching themselves from the outside in all of these circumstances and several similar ones. Then there are the OBEs which happen in circumstances which do not appear to be states of high arousal at all, when a person is just walking along the street or strolling in the country. Of course you may say that even when there is no particular sign of stress in a person’s life there may be some present. It would be a fairly difficult exercise to compare the level of unrecognized stress in the lives of apparently unstressed OBE subjects and a control group of people who also believed themselves to be living stress-free lives and had not had OBEs.
It has been suggested that stress also facilitates lucid dreams but I am keeping an open mind on this, because some of our subjects have told me that they have to be really tranquil in their lives to feel free enough to focus their attention on having lucid dreams. But I think that being in an intellectually stimulated state might help, or at least not being excessively bored.
Waking dreams and apparitional experiences show no sign at present of being associated with any form of stress, even adrenalisation. So the interesting question is, how close is what goes on in metachoric experiences to the normal perceptual process?

Gackenbach: Have lucid dreams or any of these types of experiences been important to you in your own life cycle? If so how?

Green: I never had any metachoric-type experiences until I actually started studying lucid dreams. Then I occasionally had lucid dreams. I would not say they were terribly important to me, but they were certainly interesting. At least in my own case I think of lucid dreams as quite different from ordinary ones, both in perceptual clarity and in emotional tone. I have sometimes met people who have OBEs and who have told me mental techniques for trying to induce them, but none of these ever worked for me. I certainly have an impression that individual differences have a much more determining role in influencing who is able to get OBEs, while lucid dreams could probably be induced by deliberate training in most people. Furthermore, lucid dreams arise fairly spontaneously as soon as somebody knows about them. I think this is illustrated in the people who presently work with me at the Institute. None of them, including myself, have ever had an OBE but about 50% of them have had lucid dreams although they did not before they started to study them. This has arisen without any very deliberate efforts being made, just as a result of people being exposed to the idea and perhaps thinking about lucid dreaming as they fell asleep.
Apart from my fairly small population of lucid dreams, I have never had metachoric experiences and I tend to think of myself as a sort of person who would not be easily induced to have any kind of hallucination.

Gackenbach: I understand that you are currently writing another book on lucid dreaming. Will it be significantly different from your last book? If so, how?

Green: My colleague Charles McCreery and I are writing another book on lucid dreams. It will be acompletely new book, as so much work has been done in this field since the first one, and since we have so many new cases. It will cover the same ground as the first one, but of course it will include a survey of the work to date in each of the areas covered. We are planning to follow this with a similar follow-up book on OBEs, which will also update our earlier book in the light of work that has been done since then.

Gackenbach: Do you have other writings and/or research projects planned for the future? If so, what?

Green: Of course I have an effectively unlimited quantity of research and writing projects planned for the future. The extent to which they can be carried out will, unfortunately, continue to be almost entirely determined by the financial resources which are available. As I mentioned we have had virtually no financial support since the Cecil King money ended. The scale of work which we are able to carry out, and indeed have ever been able to, should certainly not be taken to indicate that we don’t have plans for working on a larger scale. We will implement them as soon as we are able to obtain the money.
At the time I wrote Lucid Dreams no laboratory work on lucid dreams had been done and I hoped that I and my associates would be regarded as suitable people to start it. However, even though other people have started to work on lucid dreams in laboratories, we are still trying to raise money to set one up, which, by the way, would not really require an inordinately prohibitive scale of finance. Once we had it we would use it not only for lucid dreams but for work on other metachoric experiences and possibly other things as well, depending on the volume of work the laboratory could handle and the money available to us for running it. Even the writing of books in our present circumstances is a slow and difficult procedure. Nonetheless we continue to collect cases and will always be pleased to receive cases from your readers to add to our files—anything which they consider illustrative of particularly interesting points. We are especially interested in those associated with the relationship between lucid dreams and other metachoric experiences.
From time to time people from all over the world write to us, including several from the USA and Canada, wishing to come and join us in our work. So perhaps I can give this much of a preliminary answer to anyone who may be thinking of doing this. Of course everyone is welcome to come and augment our efforts, but I am afraid we cannot offer a salary at present to anyone, although we might be able to give them some help in living fairly inexpensively. As our problems are so largely financial, we hope that anyone who comes will be prepared to divide their time between helping with business activities designed to generate income to support the Institute’s work, the background work of the Institute, and work on the actual research projects.

Editor’s Note: If interested, you can write to Ms. Green at the Institute of Psycho-physical Research, 118 Ganbury Rd., Oxford, England, OX2 6JU.

##### V.8 Patricia Garfield’s Pathway to Ecstasy Re-Released: An Interview

PATRICIA GARFIELD and JAYNE GACKENBACH

San Francisco, California; Athabasca University and University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Editor’s Note: Here, Jayne Gackenbach interviews Patricia Garfield about her recently re-released book, Pathway To Ecstasy, originally published right after her best-selling Creative Dreaming.

Patricia Garfield: Spirituality and lucid dreaming were the things I was most excited about when I finished Creative Dreaming. They seemed like the future and thus where my writing should go. In 1974, before Creative Dreaming came out, I put together a book proposal and submitted it to Simon and Schuster. They felt there was not enough interest in dreaming to warrant another book, and particularly one devoted primarily to this weird aspect: lucid dreaming. I mean, nobody knew what that was. They wouldn’t take it. I had the option of just submerging it into something much larger, making it a very minor part of a book, or sticking with it and trying to get it published elsewhere. I think I hadn’t clearly developed how I wanted to present the whole of the material, other than the lucid aspects of it.
Eventually it was picked up by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, who were not terribly interested in the lucid dreaming aspect either. They were much more interested in the personal elements. At the same time this was going on, I was undergoing very intense forms of meditation. Suddenly there was the realization that these meditation experiences were connected to the lucid dream experiences. That’s where they intersected. I became so excited when this happened.

Jayne Gackenbach: Would you talk about that moment of realization?

Garfield: It’s in the chapter of the book called, “The Magical Land of Breeze And Light.” You know the characteristic feelings that accompany lucid dreaming are, by now, quite well known. But at that time, very little was spoken about them. Frequently people who had lucid dreams would talk about the rush of wind in their face, and the intensification of colors and the other things that are now common knowledge. What I experienced I didn’t quite know how to describe. I called it a “sound-feel,” or a “vibration-buzz.” To me it was kinesthetic, as well as auditory. It was not just wind in the face, the entire body seemed to “buzz.” So when I practiced this Taoist meditation, and when I had, what would probably be called in other cultures, a kundalini experience, these inner sensations became very perceptible to me while awake and meditating. Then they would occur spontaneously at other times once I had aroused them in meditation. This was then a very conscious force in my body. After I got some help with it, particularly by a Taoist meditation teacher who taught me methods of controlling it and calming it when necessary, then it became much more regulated.
The metaphor that flashes into my mind to describe these sensations is that it was like being pregnant when the baby’s kicking you and you’re sitting talking to someone, trying to be normal. The baby is kicking away inside, tickling you under the ribs, while you’re saying, “Well yes, that’s right.” The effects of meditation can also have that inner life that is so strong that it makes it difficult to focus on the external. It’s definitely a live quality once it has become aroused.
I found that it was a kind of barometer in the sense that certain things made it stronger, other things made it weaker. Certain foods that I ate stimulated it. Certain rooms, certain atmospheres. In any case, when I underwent an acupuncture treatment, I was amazed to feel this buzzing kind of line along the acupuncture channel, and I’d never heard anybody describe this or speak of it. When I talked with my acupuncturist about it, he said, “That’s your chi. Most people don’t feel it this quickly.” It was probably that my body was already very aroused in certain areas, and this became perceptible to me in quite a vivid way.
This all came together in a dream.
Ordinary kinds of things were going on, and then suddenly I became aware that something was happening in the next room. I hurried around the corner, and entered a very spacious room. All the windows were open, with sunshine streaming in every window. There was a very high ceiling and sheer curtains on the windows that were being lifted up by a breeze that was pouring in along with the light. I said to myself, “The magical land of breeze and light!” I lifted up into the air with the excitement of realizing that I was dreaming. That was my clue. By then I’d had enough lucid dreams to know that when I experienced certain imagery, then this was dreaming. I felt myself lifted up by the buzzing in my legs, a “vibration-sound.” In the dream I said, “My God! The buzzing vibration from acupuncture is the same as the feeling of lucid dreaming. It’s identical.”
That brought together a whole disparate number of experiences.

Gackenbach: So the felt experience plugged you into a wide range of other experiences.

Garfield: The connection came in the dream, while I knew I was dreaming. This integration that occurred in my thinking combined the meditation experience, the acupuncture experience and the lucid dream experience.

Gackenbach: So there was an experiential element as well as a theoretical integration going on?

Garfield: Yes. How to frame what I was trying to express about lucid dreams began to make more sense. I was also at that time reading a great deal, and undergoing some training in Tibetan Buddhism. The concept of a mandala occurred to me as a possible framework. I began taking some of the most powerful images from my dreams and trying to make a mandala composed from my lucid dream images. For example, we know how common flying is in prelucid or lucid states, as a vehicle for moving up and out. I wanted flying in my mandala. I’d had a very powerful lucid dream that began very ordinarily, as so many of them do.
I was standing on a street corner talking to some people about a book I was going to get published. They were going to the publishers, and I said, “I’ll meet you there in a while.” I had to run home and pick up some notes. I hurried to where I seemed to live in the dream and opened a little iron gate that led to an alleyway. I was barefoot in the dream. I went into this little alleyway, and I was suddenly across it. I’m never barefoot outside on the sidewalks, and I don’t live in an alleyway, so these are discrepancies that might have clued me to the incongruent aspects of the dream. But it didn’t happen until I got into the alleyway and I saw this beautiful tree across the street. It was covered, not with leaves, but with blue feathers. On this feathered tree were sitting many, many bluebirds, and I looked at the tree and said, “Ah! I’m dreaming! You know, this has got to be a dream tree! Suddenly one of the birds was on my finger and I began stroking this little creature. And I started to say “Oh you pretty “
But I began to feel tired. For me, when a dream becomes lucid or right after, there’s often a change in consciousness that can take the form of going to sleep. It can take the form of waking up. It can take the form of going into a trance. It can be being light-headed, but there is some kinesthetic feeling in my head that says, “Oh, you know “ And I go into another state.
In this case I suddenly felt very tired, and I lay down on my right side and I could feel this buzzing vibration, but in this case it had the actual form of light. It was a buzzing light that travelled in my legs and around my buttocks and I just lay still in the dream watching this buzzing light knowing perfectly well I was dreaming, just waiting to see what would happen. And suddenly it occurred to me that my husband actually turned over in bed, so the whole bed jiggled, and my dream snapped into the ordinary. It continued, but now there was this little child, a little boy lying in his cot on his right hand side and his mother had just opened the door to ask him what he wanted for dinner. In the lucid part I was trying to decide what to do with the lucidity and here was this little boy being offered a choice of all kinds of wonderful things. Then she looked at him and said, “Oh I’m sorry. Did I wake you up?” And then I actually awoke.
The bluebird that was in my dream became an important figure representing the ability to fly, so I condensed my many, many flying images from lucid dreams into one blue feather that had a place on the mandala.
Passionate dreams are a very consistent part of my lucid dreaming, not always, but often. In one of the dreams which became lucid:
I was lying on the couch in a beautiful room, and I looked out the open window, and saw that the moon was full. I suddenly realized that I was dreaming and said, “Fly me to the moon.” I lifted off the couch, out the window and into the night sky with the wonderful streaming of the wind against my face and hair. There was an exhilaration of moving toward the light, this wonderful luminous light, and suddenly I was there, on the moon, and everything was red. There was a bare-breasted woman in a red dress that was in the shape of a strawberry. The whole dream scene was infused with this strawberry red light.
So from this dream I then took the symbol of the strawberry, almost like a nipple, a female succulent symbol that became my image for the passion of lucid dreams. So I had the flying element, and I had the passionate element. I call these figures “deities” in the framework of the mandala because they were, it seemed to me, to be the images that brought a supernatural kind of experience.
You know how sound in lucid dreams can become very crystal clear. Often there is music, pulsation and rhythm going on. Another compelling image from my dreams was a woman who spoke in musical tones which I called in the dream “bell tones.” When she opened her mouth to speak, what came out was a musical bell tone, so I used the bell as a symbol. This is the way I built the mandala. There were four major deities and there were the “temple walls” which were the walls of my childhood where negative dreams used to take place. I likened this to the sacred space in which the dreamer’s power is encapsulated if you can get in touch with it, rather than being frightened by it and scared away by the fear.
The central figure of the mandala became the deity of the branching woman, which was another one of these revelations from an accumulation of dreams. I had a dream once in which I was at a conference. I described this in Creative Dreaming.
I stood up and . . . nobody was paying much attention to me. (It was long before I had written Creative Dreaming, and there wasn’t any response to my work.) I said, “I’ve had a series of dreams in which there were women that had growths coming from their head. They were branches or antlers, I wasn’t quite sure, but many, many reaching out in all directions. I’m fascinated with this.”
And in the dream, people just started talking and not paying any attention, and going on with their thing and my husband leaned over and said, “Oh, you did that very well.” And he kissed me on the cheek. I wandered over to the table where people were eating and there wasn’t any food left for me.
I woke up and thought, “What a weird thing to say! Have I ever dreamt about women with things growing out of their heads? I don’t remember it.” I often draw little sketches in the left hand column of my dream journals, so I went back through the journals, years back, and I found that, indeed, that was true. There was a whole series of such images. They were characters in the background. One for instance was a woman in a hat that just had branches coming out of it. All the way through the years there had been a series of images that I never consciously noticed. And then finally this branching woman. It became a numinous symbol for me, I mean, what is this? It was the arising of an archetype. I wondered, “What is this coming from?” I sculpted it and I painted it and I thought a lot about it and it finally occurred to me that this was upward moving energy, from my point of view, that referred to my own creativity that was branching, that was growing, that was reaching out in many directions.
This too, I saw was related to meditation. If you look at any form of esoteric knowledge, all systems have some symbol that has to do with the head, and the radiance coming from that. In Christianity you have the halo. In Buddhism you have the thousand-petaled lotus. In many of the groups a piece of hair is at a particular point on the head. In acupuncture this point is called the “thousand crossroads.” There is, again in Chinese acupuncture theory, a spot at the top of the head at which all the channels cross, and it is this point that becomes active in meditation, when there is a kind of kundalini experience. I somehow came to the realization that my branching woman was my personal version of all of these images in different systems that come up with a different image, but that the energy was in the same place. And so this became the central image in my dream mandala.

Gackenbach: What were you were trying to say with Pathway?

Garfield: I was trying to integrate the experience of enlightenment. Regardless of whether it took place within a dream or in a waking meditation, I was trying to trace that experience within the visual form. There is a certain path that you follow within the mandala. You enter in a certain place and you move around it. And each of the images were signposts of what was happening within the dream.

Gackenbach: It wasn’t just dreams though. It was within meditation as well.

Garfield: Yes, it was paralleled. Higher states of consciousness and lucid dreaming share many characteristics. Many of the things that are happening in lucid dreams also happen in intense meditation sessions. There is a parallel between the two states. One could have created a mandala based on meditation experience. I chose to make a visual pattern that was based on my lucid dream experiences.

Gackenbach: What’s nice is that the dream is better able to offer you clear visual images. In meditation that can happen, but it’s more rare.

Garfield: And it’s considered distractive by many disciplines, so that you might almost suppress it rather than welcome it. In the dreams visual imagery is so much a part of the experience that it helps you to retain it. It helps you to stay in touch, I think, with the energy and the feeling and the emotion of the dream, and gives you the handle to get back into it.

Gackenbach: Have you ever had experiences of what I would call “pure consciousness?” Justawareness, not witnessing. Where there’s no second thing, yet you’re very clear. You are all awareness, not just awareness of something.

Garfield: Yes I have, but more in waking meditation, or even just lying asleep in bed at night awakening in the night, probably fresh from the dream, when I am awake, but just extending. There is no limits to the body, and I can actually feel waves of pulsation, extending out from some center.

Gackenbach: You don’t necessarily call it, “me, me.”

Garfield: Of course in dreams one has this sometimes, or something like it anyway. Have you never dreamt you were a point of awareness in the dream, just a tiny speck? You’re not a thing.

Gackenbach: Or it emerged out of pure awareness to a point and then it became structured, and then a “me” got put on it. Like geometric forms came before “I” came, but awareness came before the geometric forms.

Garfield: Mine would be more perhaps the opposite, just like this tiny crumb, sometimes going between being one little focused point, somewhere in the dream, just watching, and then to a giant, I call it “God-like.” Suddenly you’re above and you’re not in a dream body. You’re omniscient somehow. You see and know everything.

Gackenbach: When you read such accounts there are certain themes that reverberate through them.

Garfield: I’ll just conclude by saying, Jayne, that I’m really pleased that Pathway has a second life because the first was very short really. It was in print for one year, and it was the year that the government imposed a tax on inventory. The publishers were panicking right and left, and they were taking any book that wasn’t moving fast enough to suit them and chopping them up into paper towels. If you want a nightmare, picture the book of your heart being chopped up into paper towels. So it was rather traumatic, extremely distressing. But as time went on. .

Gackenbach: So why the second offer, do you think?

Garfield: Because, although Pathway didn’t have a broad audience at the beginning, it did have a very devoted one. The people who read it and understood it were limited, but they were absolutely passionate about what it meant to them. People kept it by their bedside, and said, “It was the best book I ever read. This book changed my life.” That kind of thing. It was much more extreme than for the first book, which was generally liked. This was at a much deeper level. I began getting letters from libraries saying that their copy had been stolen again, so please, please could I replace it? It was one of their most popular books. People began hunting for it. I got passionate letters asking if they could please buy a copy from me, they’d put searches on it. So there was a whole stream of people to whom it did speak. Finally, ten years later, after it had come out in seventy-nine, one of the publishers said, “But this is a New Age book. You know, you were ten years too early, and now we want to publish it.” They asked me to write a new introduction, and said that the time is right for it now. Now people can understand it. So many people now know what lucid dreaming is—it’s almost a household word. And the dreamwork movement is very broad. The bodywork movement is very developed, but at the time that this was originally written, it was all embryonic. Way ahead of its time. I know a lot of people who say, “I was so glad to see that in print again.” So I think it has a new life and has something to offer to a certain segment of aware dreamers.

Gackenbach: I think it would be nicer to be able to say something deeply to a few people than somethingcursory to so many.

Garfield: Well, one would like to be able to do both.

##### V.9 Keith Hearne’s Work on Lucid Dreaming

KEITH HEARNE

Hull, Northumberside, England

Many hundreds of people in the U.S. and other countries have written to me asking about my research into lucid dreaming, so let me summarize it thus. My initial knowledge of the phenomenon came from reading Celia Green’s little book Lucid Dreams, and van Eeden’s paper given to the Society for Psychical Research (1913). Having completed some research into the modification of evoked responses by visual imagery (Hearne, 1976; 1978b), my thoughts turned to the question of whether a suitable channel of communication could be established between a lucid dreamer and the outside world, so permitting the dream to be studied “from within” for the first time. A method using ocular signalling, which circumvented the general bodily atonia of REM sleep, was found to work beautifully with a subject on the morning of 12 April 1975 at 8:07 in the Department of Psychology at Hull University. That breakthrough enabled me to define the basic characteristics of lucid dreams in a three-year study for a Ph.D. (Hearne, 1977; 1978a; 1980a,b; 1981a,c; 1982c) after transferring to Liverpool University. That thesis was lodged in May 1978, and copies are obtainable from the Librarian.
Essentially, that early research found that:

1. The lucid dreams were indeed genuine dreams occurring in Stage REM sleep, and not some form of waking imagery (although I think some may be);

2. They had a duration of several minutes and usually happened towards the end of the sleep period—on average some 24 minutes [sic] after the start of a REM period;

3. A prelucid REM burst, averaging 22 seconds, invariably preceded lucidity—indicating, perhaps, prior cortical stimulation;

4. The quality of sleep on lucid dream nights was no different from control nights;

5. The emotional level in the dream might be predetermined;

6. The reported events corresponded closely with information signalled from within the dream (it hadnever been certain how far one could trust dream reports).

Further items of research conducted at that time included a simulating control study—in which subjects attempted (unsuccessfully) to produce similar eye signals by cheating; questionnaire data; personality and intellectual capacity in relation to lucid dreaming; lucidity-induction methods; and description of various devices.
By the way, I was greatly encouraged in my research by Allan Rechtschaffen of Chicago University, with whom I corresponded and sent my early results to in 1975.

The Need For A “Dream-Machine”

The early work was inefficient because I had no idea when a subject would have a lucid dream—in one study, only eight lucid dreams were monitored out of 45 nights of continuous polygraphic monitoring. This problem caused me to ponder on the possibility of artificially inducing lucidity in subjects. Some form of external stimulation seemed a likely technique for producing an internal perception within the dream which might trigger lucidity by acting as a cue. To make an automated unit, some form of dream detector would also be required. Much effort went into developing both aspects of the “dream-machine.” All sorts of stimulation methods were tried, including sound stimuli, sprinkled water, pungent odours, etc. However, a method of electrical stimulation to the median nerve at the wrist was found to be effective.
Different methods of dream detection were investigated. The first technique was to monitor REMs but this electrode system proved to be unsatisfactory in operation. Eventually, the method of using a nasal thermistor was chosen—providing an artifact-free method of monitoring the respiratory rate differences between SWS and REM sleep. That device was patented, but another patent covers many other ways of detecting dreaming sleep (including monitoring penile erection!) and forms of stimulation. In a sleep-lab study the technique was found to induce lucidity in half the twelve subjects, in just one night each (Hearne, 1982d). Another function of the “dream machine” is its ability to wake (using an audible tone) the user from REM sleep, so increasing the amount of dream recall. That option might be useful for “dream interpretation” groups. Nightmare sufferers (Hearne, 1980c) and sleep-paralysis sufferers (Hearne, 1982e) could also use it to good effect. In connection with a TV programme here recently, the device induced lucidity in about one third of the users. One person entered the lucid state three times on one night. Hopefully, the units will become available in the U.S. later this year. (By the way, the unit which a student at Newcastle used—see last Lucidity Letter [Steven Venus, 1982, Early Results with Hearne’s Dream Machine, Lucidity Letter, 1(2), 7]—is not one that I have tested, and it lacks certain new elements.
Another discovery I made was that the respiratory rate could be altered voluntarily in the lucid state. That gave rise to a further invention (Hearne, 1982a)—a unit which enables the lucid dreamer to participate in a dream-telepathy experiment. On becoming aware of dreaming, the subject makes a sequence of rapid breaths (detected by a simple nasal thermistor) which triggers an automatic telephone-dialing device. The other person in the experiment is thus contacted and can attempt to send or receive telepathic information—if such a thing is possible. The dreamer’s accounts are compared with the “target” information. The dream state has long been considered to be conducive to telepathy, and lucid dreams are particularly useful for research in this area because the dreaming subjects knows full well that he or she is taking part in an experiment and can concentrate on the task. The apparatus has been tested and found to work satisfactorily.
Over the years I have heard and read many dream accounts. I began to notice that the inability to switch on an electric light in the dream (lucid or ordinary) scenery was mentioned quite a lot. I therefore gave the task to eight lucid dreamers (Hearne, 1981). All reported back in isolation so as not to bias the reports. Six subjects found that the light would not work properly, one person could not find a switch, and the lights did switch on for one person—however that was just after she had “covered her eyes” in the dream and so abolished the imagery. It would seem that perhaps there is a “ceiling limit” on visual imagery-brightness and that an attempt, using dream control, to exceed that limit has to be dealt with (by the central dream-directing process) by rationalized avoidance of the intended situation. A follow-up study (Hearne, 1982b) found similar results, but one subject reported switching on a light with no prior decrease in brightness level. Conceivably, on those odd occasions when it does work [see also Tart’sreport, last issue], the event might correspond with spontaneous phasic activity which might at that moment increase the ceiling limit. Clearly, further research is required here. I have a feeling that the “light-switch phenomenon” might also be observed in waking imagery, using good visualizers. They must, of course, be naďve subjects.
The second study also indicated that the various imaging modalities may be loosely linked in dreams and that “substitution” of imagery may occur in other modalities. The forms may have different priority of effect over others at any one time. Schools of dream “interpretation” have failed to consider the possibility that there might be natural limitations in dreams; therefore many “analyses” could have been highly erroneous. On “closing” or “covering” their eyes in the lucid dream state, all six respondents reported that a scene shift occurred. In two cases, a rerun of the dream happened. Oneironauts (Hearne, 1981c) need to learn about these techniques in order to make the most of their lucid dreams.
In response to a questionnaire about lucid dreams printed in a British national newspaper in 1980, much information was acquired (Hearne, n.d.).
Lucid dreams are without doubt an important new avenue of research because, apart from insights into the dreaming process that we are sure to discover, I think we shall be able to learn something about consciousness itself. The “switching on” of consciousness in the unchanging physiological state of REM sleep can be sudden. A study of the brain’s activity at that moment could be most rewarding. In addition to such knowledge, the induction of lucidity by suggestion or electronic techniques could open up a limitless “inner universe” of experience to many people, and the undoubted creativity aspect of dreaming sleep could be harnessed so that man may research new heights of artistic and scientific invention.

References

Green, C. (1968). Lucid dreams. Oxford, England: Institute for Psychophysical Research.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1976). Visual imagery and evoked responses. M.Sc. thesis, Department of Psychology, Hull University

Hearne, K.M.T. (1977). Eye-movement communication from lucid dreams: A new technique and initial findings. Paper given to 11th Post-doctoral Conference in the Behavioural Sciences, Hull University, April 15-18.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1978a). Lucid dreams: An electrophysiological and psychological study. Ph.D. thesis, University of Liverpool.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1978b). Visual imagery and evoked responses. Psychological Research, 40: 89–92.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1980a). Insight into lucid dreams. Nursing Mirror, March 6: 20– 22.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1980b). Lucid dreams, a new area for psi investigation. Paper given at Annual Conference of the Society for Psychical Research, Brighton, April 21–23.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1980c). Terror lurking in the dark. Nursing Mirror, August 14: 18–20.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1981a). Control your own dreams. New Scientist, 91(1272), 783–785.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1981b). A ‘light-switch’ phenomenon in lucid dreams. Journal of Mental Imagery.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1981c). Lucid dreams and ‘ESP’: An initial experiment using one subject. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 51(787), 7–11.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1982a). An automated technique for studying ‘psi’ in home lucid dreams. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (June).

Hearne, K.M.T. (1982b). Effects of performing certain set tasks in the lucid dream state. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 54: 259–262.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1982c). Eye-movement communication from lucid dreams: A new technique and initial findings. Perceptual and Motor Skills.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1982d). Lucid dream induction. Journal of Mental Imagery (Fall).

Hearne, K.M.T. (1982e). Trapped in sleep. Nursing Mirror, January 13: 34–35.

Hearne, K.M.T. (n.d.). Features of lucid dreams: Questionnaire data and content analyses. (unpublished.)

Tart, C.T. (1982). Switching on a light while lucid. Lucidity Letter, 1(2), 8.

van Eeden, F. (1913). A study of dreams. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 26(47), 431–461.

##### V.10 Alan Worsley’s Work on Lucid Dreaming

ALAN WORSLEY

St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, Great Britain

I have had lucid dreams since I was a child and first carried out experiments in lucid dreams in my early teens. I did not have access to an EEG machine operator to obtain hard evidence of my findings until, in 1975, I persuaded Keith Hearne that we should use his expertise with the EEG machine at Hull University to investigate some of the more accessible physiological correlates of lucid dream activity. By this time I had a first degree in psychology and six years’ post-graduate research as a student and member of staff at Hull University.
It is one of the ironies of lucid dream work that the experimenter in the lucid dream state cannot operate the EEG machine himself (although progress has now been made on this). Without Keith I could not have proceeded further with my lucid dream experiments in a way that would produce acceptable results, and I was very pleased to have Keith’s help in this way. Then, after our initial exciting success with eye movement communication, Keith was so enthusiastic about this new technique and the whole subject of lucid dreams, that he arranged, with my cooperation, to make lucid dreams the subject of his doctorate thesis.
In consequence of this agreement all the early work went into Keith’s thesis, but this was not intended to be a permanent arrangement. I continued to work with Keith until 1980 when publicity for Keith’s version of the lucid dream machine reached a peak. Since then, I have been working with Dr. P. Fenwick and Dr. M. Schatzman in the EEG Department of St. Thomas’s Hospital in London on the electrophysiological aspects of lucid dreams, and at home on those aspects less accessible to current physical techniques.
Some of this latest electrophysiological work has been written up We have shown, among other things, that it is after all possible to operate a hand-switch in a lucid dream, provided the switch is suitable. The switch can also be foot-operated.
An interesting recent demonstration at St. Thomas’s is that it is possible, by appropriate manipulation of dream imagery, to achieve smooth, controlled movements of one eye while the other eye remains still. This is perhaps the best evidence yet of the close relationship between dream imagery and physiological activity.
In the same dream I performed a light switch phenomenon (LSP) experiment in circumstances of low illumination, which followed “opening the eyes.” Before “opening the eyes” only haptic imagery was present. I switched the light on and the low illumination became normal illumination smoothly, over a period of about three seconds. From previous personal instances this appears to be a regular pattern and may well be the same for other lucid dreamers also, provided they do not alter their expectations to correspond to “light not working” when it does not come on suddenly as intended and expected. Therefore, perhaps a more important limit than that of brightness proposed by Keith Hearne (some limiton brightness is unavoidable) is a limit on the rate at which a change in the imagery can occur. The EEG record in this instance shows no obvious change in relation to the LSP. It has not yet been subjected to spectral analysis.
I am at present carrying out a series of experiments on myself, at home, to explore a number of aspects of the LSP. One of these is to arrange to view the dream scene through a coloured filter (for example, plastic or glass, or whatever you can find in the dream). Points to observe are: What is the effect? How long does it last? Does it go when the filter is removed, etc.? It is also important to distinguish between instances of:

1. Low initial illumination;

2. No illumination; and

3. Whether the imagery is active or static.

It seems, again from a rather small number of personal experiences, that dream imagery in different sensory modalities is not necessarily well integrated (I have, on rare occasions, had experiences where I seemed to be having different dreams in different modalities—seeing one thing but feeling another). The initiation of imagery in an inactive modality, especially vision, by manipulation of imagery in an active but different modality, for example, operating a light switch in the dark, may be harder than trying to achieve effects within an active modality, for example using colour filters over the eyes or the light source.
This experiment is intended to reveal the imagery dynamics relating to attempts to affect the appearance of the visual imagery as a whole. Another way of doing this would be to vary the source of the light and the means of control, for example, sunlight and a blind.
Another experiment in this LSP group which I have tried several times is the “gun” experiment. This is designed to investigate the production of sudden effects within the context of the otherwise unchanged dream scene. Is there a bang, a kick, a flash? Does the bullet hit the target? How long does it take to reach the target?
Perhaps one point I should make now is that as the above experiments are likely to be carried out in “full” dreams, that is, with active imagery, whereas in the nature of the situation the LSP tends to be associated with an initial situation involving either no visual imagery or static visual imagery, the single dimension comparison experiments I have proposed are not one hundred percent comparable, even though the typical LSP situation may be followed by a classic lucid dream.
I am pleased to hear that Keith Hearne’s dream machine really works. As [at the time this article was written] his latest publication giving evidence for this (Lucidity Letter, Volume 1, Number 3) [was] not yet available, I refer to the previous one in the New Scientist, as follows.
From this article it is not clear what method Keith, in attempting to induce lucid dreams by electric shocks, used to verify that lucidity had in fact occurred. “Eight out of twelve subjects, each run for one night only, reported becoming lucid on those occasions,” (my emphasis). While dreaming, I have demonstrated, as has LaBerge, the ability to signal the message that lucidity is occurring. One excellent technique for doing this, which Keith and I devised in 1975, is communicating by eye movements. Is this the technique he used with his eight allegedly successful subjects? Were any of these “reports” of lucidity made while the subjects were still asleep and in REM? If they were, it would seem appropriate for him tohave said so instead of using the ambiguous term “reported.”
If it is the case that these reports were made verbally after waking, then it must be pointed out that because of the demand characteristics of the situation (namely the subjects’ knowledge of the desired result—lucidity induced by electric shock), there must be serious doubt about the value of such reports.
Furthermore, he fails to report instances in other experiments he carried out in which lucidity was reported as having been induced by shocks when there were no shocks but the subject, expecting shocks, dreamed that there were. This control data diminishes the significance of the eight out of twelve positive “reports” even further. Subjects in experiments concerning dreams and altered states of consciousness are so sensitive to suggestion that twelve individual trials is a small sample upon which to base an important scientific claim.
Let us see a continuous polygraphic record showing by EEG, EOG and EMG:

1. That the subject was in REM immediately before the shocks;

2. The point at which the shocks occurred;

3. The eye movement signal denoting that lucidity was achieved; and

4. The continuance of REM after the lucidity signal.

Such an example would be more interesting than the one shown which, in fact, does not show a lucidity signal in response to electric shocks, as the context might seem to imply, but is a record of a spontaneous lucid dream that I had in July 1976.
Incidentally, contrary to what Keith Hearne seems to be claiming, the “dream machine” described in Lucidity Letter (Volume 1, Number 3), using a nasal thermistor, is not yet (to 16 June 1982) patented, at least not in Britain.
Editor’s Note: A document issued by the British Patent office 17 June 1982, was enclosed with the preceding letter.

References

Hearne, K.M.T. (1981). Control your own dreams. New Scientist, 91(1272), 783–785.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1982). Lucid dream induction. Journal of Mental Imagery.

Hearne, K.M.T. (1982). Keith Hearne’s work on lucid dreaming. Lucidity Letter, 1(3), 15–17.

# Part VI: Applications

## Introduction

STEPHEN LABERGE

Stanford University, California

At first consideration the notion of practical applications for something as ethereal as a dream may seem fanciful at best. Be that as it may, in Lucid Dreaming I recounted a story that is still apt: in the eighteenth century electricity was thought no more than a scientific curiosity and a practical-minded woman is said to have asked Benjamin Franklin, “But what use is it?” His reply is famous: “What use, ma-dame, is a newborn baby?” If today the same question were asked in regard to lucid dreaming, a “scientific curiosity” of the twentieth century, the same answer could justifiably be given. Nonetheless, a variety of anecdotes and observations suggest that, like electricity, the power of lucid dreaming could also be harnessed to aid us in performing a variety of tasks with far greater ease.
Many varieties of lucid dreaming applications have been proposed: scientific exploration, health and inner growth, creative problem solving, rehearsal and deci-sion making, and wish fulfillment and recreation. Part VI (see also other parts of this volume) presents illustrations of many of these applications. For example, there are accounts of lucid dreaming applied to sports (Tholey), creative inspiration for paint-ing (Bogzaran), and healing (LaBerge, Kellogg).
The most interest and controversy has been expressed in the area of clinical application. A panel discussion on clinical mental health applications from the first meeting of the Lucidity Association gives a hint of the range of views. Two reprints put these applications in perspective: a comparison of clinical and transpersonal approaches (Hunt), and an account of the use of lucid awareness in dreaming and waking life (Malamud).
Some of the papers presented here reflect the considerable controversy over the issue of whether lucid dreaming is dangerous or of limited value and the extent to which general development of lucid dreaming should be encouraged. I think it is worth noting that every new idea in history has been accompanied by objections that the invention or innovation is some combination of unsafe, unnecessary, unethical, and unnatural. “If God had intended man to fly, He would have given him wings.” Some seem to consider it equally impious to fly wingless in dreams.
Objections aside, in time we shall see what this newborn baby is capable of.

### Section A: Clinical Issues

##### VI.A.1 Mental Health Applications: A Panel Discussion

PATRICIA GARFIELD, JUDITH MALAMUD, JEAN CAMPBELL, ANN SAYRE WISEMAN, and GORDON HALLIDAY

San Francisco, California; New York, New York; Poseidia Institute, Virginia Beach, Virginia; Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Center for Individual and Family Services, Mansfield, Ohio Editor’s Note: This panel discussion includes the following presentations:

- Judith Malamud: Interaction With Inner Wisdom Figures
- Jean Campbell: A Therapist Dreams With a Client
- Ann Sayre Wiseman: Lucidity and the Language of Imagery
- Gordon Halliday: Clinical Utility Seen in Lucid Dream Ability
- Patricia Garfield: When and For Whom Is Lucidity Appropriate?

Garfield: We turn now to the application of the technique of lucid dreaming. We’ve looked at a lot of ways to induce lucidity, we’ve seen what it’s composed of physiologically. But, what can it do for us? What’s the point? Suppose we can produce this state at will; will that make any difference in our lives? And if so, how? What we’re going to consider now is the viewpoint of our different distinguished panelists. We have Jean Campbell, Judy Malamud, Ann Wiseman and Gordon Halliday. I’ll tell you a little bit about each of them before they make their comments and then we’ll consider together different aspects of the value of lucid dreaming.

Judith Malamud: Interaction With Inner Wisdom Figures

Garfield: Judy is a psychologist from New York City who practices psychotherapy; she leads dream and lucidity workshops. In 1979 she completed her doctoral dissertation on lucid dreaming.

Malamud: Let me tell you how I first started to get interested in lucidity. Ever since I was a teenager in college and was learning about dreams in courses, it seemed to me there was something really weird and self-alienating about waking up from a dream and then using a symbol system, Freudian symbolism, to translate the images, as if I were translating a foreign language. I knew I was creating my dreams myself, that I was expressing myself through dreaming, so I wondered why I had to consult some system of dream symbolism in order to understand what I, myself, meant to express. I know what I mean to express when I’m awake or when I’m talking to you, so why don’t I know what I mean to express when I’m dreaming, which is when I’m really talking about the most personal, meaningful aspects of myself? I wanted to get in touch with that side of myself that creates dreams, so that I could become unified within myself.
When the time came to do my doctoral dissertation, I read Patricia Garfield’s book, Creative Dreaming, and thought, “Why not put dreaming to constructive use? Why let this time to go to waste? Maybe there can be actual constructive personality change within the dream itself.” So I began working with pilot subjects, instructing them to perform various “positive” behaviors in their dreams, like the “Senoi” techniques for confronting and conquering danger, exploring mysterious situations, bring back treasures [Editor’s Note: Although this solution is less than satisfying, we are enclosing “Senoi” in quotes in this paper to indicate the Western traditions that paradoxically evolved out of Kilton Stewart’s anthropological work. This usage is meant to differentiate American and European so-called “Senoi” dream control from the traditional dream theory and practice of Malaysian Senoi peoples as studied and described by anthropologists like Dentan and Domhoff as well as dream-workers Faraday and Wren-Lewis. See the History section of this issue of Lucidity for views endorsed by most anthropologists.] —until I encountered one pilot subject who was frank enough to tell me, “Judy, I know you’re right that I should do these things, but I really don’t like being told what I should do in my dreams.” I realized she had a point. Who was I to tell her what is good, positive, constructive dream behavior?
At that point, my interest in lucidity increased, because I realized that the lucid dream state is a state which is inherently totally free and totally safe and therefore permits one to be maximally creative in whatever way one wishes. I figured I’d change my approach. My new approach would be to teach people to become aware that they’re dreaming and aware of the implications of the fact that they’re dreaming. I would teach them that they the are the ones creating everything that goes on in dreams, that everything in the environment reflects aspects of their own thoughts, feelings, wishes, or perceptions of the world, and that the dream state is an alternate reality. The dream world is not the concrete world, which means that the physical body cannot be hurt by what goes on in the dream. Dreamers can do things in a dream that no one will know about in waking life unless they tell, after waking up. The dream state can become an arena for trying out or discovering what your inner wishes and fantasies might be. You can sleep with people that it would be totally unacceptable to do that with in waking life, and discover what pleases you in a safe, private environment.
Recently, I’ve been developing ways of teaching people to get in touch with the side of themselves that uses dream language. For example, I have people practice correlating their feelings and wishes with waking imagery, to familiarize them with how they naturally use imagery for self-expression. I also teach people to become aware of the implications of the fact that they’re dreaming. I feel that it’s not enough, for therapeutic purposes, merely to know you’re dreaming, because—so what? What you really need to know is that you’re creating the dream, you’re safe, the dream world reflects yourself, and therefore, you can learn about yourself.
The most recent development in my life has been—I’m sure Jean will talk more about this kind of phenomenon—getting in touch with an inner wisdom figure who has been communicating with me mentally, and has even told me, “Judy, you’re worried about what you’re going to say on this panel. Don’t worry about it. I’ll write your position paper for you.” She’s trying to teach me to be lucid in waking life. Being lucid in waking life means being aware of the extent to which you are contributing to creating what’s going on, and being aware that what you perceive somehow reflects your own wishes, thoughts, feelings, etc. Waking lucidity is realizing that there are always alternative possibilities. Just as in a dream, there are many alternative possibilities that you can choose among, and so there’s this kind of freedom in waking life as well.
Let me read you a brief section of my inner wisdom figure’s position paper. Her name is Role Model. She said:
Once upon a time, there were few people who understood that dreams reflected their outlook on life. Freud changed all that. Now, everyone and his brother interprets dreams and purports to understand dreams. What they don’t yet realize is this: Morsels of knowledge about the self are not enough to uproot the fundamental fallacy of human existence, which is that we are victims of reality rather than its creators.
By the way, I don’t know that I agree with everything she says. She’s rather radical. [Role Model’s position paper continues:]
The victim posture has been a useful one for humankind for millenia, but this is beginning to change. Lucidity is the fastest way to undo the fundamental error. It is better not to understand too much before one has gained the benefits of error, hence dreams are not ordinarily lucid. The struggle to become lucid represents a first step toward willingness to see into the power of one’s true nature. Fortunately, there is no harm in delaying knowledge or wisdom. They come by themselves to everyone, in time. But the clinical use of techniques for becoming lucid in dreams promised to speed up that process of gaining self-knowledge, for those who are in a hurry.

Garfield: We’ve seen here the values of lucid dreaming as experienced by Judy: a sense of freedom, of an environment to test out different possibilities, of a safe place to make discoveries and of a place to get in touch with wisdom—that’s very precious, no matter what his or her name is.

Jean Campbell: A Therapist Dreams With a Client

Garfield: Jean Campbell is director of Poseidia Institute, an institute in Virginia Beach. She’s the author of a book called Dreams Beyond Dreaming and she has been actively conducting dream research, particularly along the lines of dreams as an altered state of consciousness, for the last 12 years. Her current research project is called “Dreams to the Tenth Power.”

Campbell: I’m not a psychologist, I’m a parapsychologist and Poseidia Institute is a parapsychology research organization. What that means is that the bulk of my research has been in dreams as an altered state of consciousness, that is, looking at consciousness as a continuum from waking state to a whole variety of other states, dreams being only one of them, and lucid dreaming being part of that continuum of consciousness.

Recently we have been doing some research called “Dreams to the Tenth Power,” which is a study in group dreaming. That is, not only is it possible to have people dream lucidly, but is it possible to control the dream state? Is it possible to have people dream simultaneously, dream together, dream on some regular basis with each other? There are a lot of people by this time who appear to be proving that that might be true. That is, if we decide as a group that we want to dream tonight, together, pick a place, pick a time, and see what happens. We could do it. We’ve tried this with people who are not regular lucid dreamers and people who are regular lucid dreamers.

Since that is not really the subject of this panel, I don’t want to go any further with that except to say that although I am not a counselor myself, we do counseling at Poseidia. I have seen what looks to me like one of the most beneficial uses of lucid dreaming or lucidity in therapy in the past few months. That is, one of the therapists who works through Poseidia Institute, in addition to doing some work with clients in terms of dreaming with each other, had a client who had a particularly difficult problem with nightmares. The client would only fragmentarily remember the nightmare but knew that it was tremendously traumatic. What the therapist did, having already been trained in lucidity, was dream with the client.

She first dreamed the dream as the client was having the dream, that is, she saw the dream through the client’s eyes, while she was asleep. Then she proceeded, because she knew she was asleep, to see the dream from her own perspective. That is, from her own clinical perspective. What this gave her was insight into, or awareness of, the client’s dream. It gave her awareness of how to cope with the dream and then in the next counseling session she was able to work with the client with the dream content and get through what the nightmare was and how to deal with it. This I see as only one aspect of what lucidity is able to do for all of us. Since we’re not all therapists, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll be doing that particular kind of thing, but being lucid, being able to draw on all of our capabilities, all of the awareness that are available to us in lucidity, certainly seems to me to be a marvelous thing to have.

Garfield: Assuming that it is possible for a group of people to simultaneously dream together, what would you see as being the benefit of that?

Campbell: Let’s see. Say we (signifying the panel) had a problem, and say that at a waking level we, for our own anxiety reasons, wanted to keep a lot back. The rules are different in the dream state. We allow ourselves different things in the dream state. Like Judy was saying, you can sleep with a lot of different people in the dream state. I’m not suggesting that that’s what we would do with the problem. However, say that we decided as a group to dream together. I’m not saying that we would have to be lucid, but certainly being lucid would be of some use. That is, being aware that we were dreaming together might be of some value to us. But, because the rules are different in the dream state, if our problem was that we had a problem together, but we happened to live and be at home in California, and New York, and Virginia Beach, it’s a great way to call a conference. It costs less than the telephone and allows you to solve some things.

Ann Sayre Wiseman: Lucidity and the Language of Imagery

Garfield: Ann Sayre Wiseman is an artist and therapist working with dreams and art in psychotherapy at the Arts Institute of Expressive Therapy at Lesley College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her particular focus is an interesting concept based on finding the image of a problem and satisfying it. It locates the style of dialogue needed to negotiate self empowering strategies for integration and rebalancing opposing forces inside us. Ann, let’s hear more about that.

Wiseman: We’ve been talking about lucid dreaming. I think what I’m teaching and practicing could be called lucid waking, for lack of a better name. It is similar, it taps the same wave length that is tapped while dreaming but you can, by closing your eyes and going deep inside, tap it in the waking state too. It is the source of imagining and picture language that produce dreams and that mirror our feelings.

Since imagery is the picture language, I use a lot of art, and torn paper collage as a medium to restage a dream and work it through to satisfaction. We make a collage map of a dream or a problem, a situation or even an illness, whatever the issue is. Then, using closed eye imaging, we invite more information from this lucid source which our dreams have access to. A kind of meditation.

When I was three years old I experienced this lucid awareness on a night trip that acquainted me with my pre-body essence. I had fragments of this dream throughout childhood. It was dynamic elements surpassing the limits of a dream.

I flew through the universe and contacted all the elements, saw color in every aspect of its spectrum, and woke from it with the “why of life” question, and always in my mouth I tasted rust (which of course, is very similar to the taste of blood, which made me think it was a birth dream). This flight changed from limitless boundaries to the confines of my own momentum as I came into a sort of spiraling pattern—the way water begins to spiral down a spout after the plug is out. As my essence drew near the center the rotations quickened and the colors pulled more pigment out of the developing speed, until I began to drown in black lava which ultimately exploded from suffocation. I’d always wake with the taste of rust in my mouth and the “why of life” question. I woke more astonished than frightened. Astonished to find I could breathe and had landed safely.

This recurring revelation has made me believe that probably children know all there is to know from the very start of conception but after entering the human form it takes them a lifetime to become reacquainted with this essence awareness. Guided imagery is very close to it. At least it opens some of the unexercised passages or wavelengths which our culture doesn’t tap very often.

I had another lucid experience at Esalen while doing a work-study program.

I was weeding and clearing land and was sent out onto the cliff alone to turn earth for a new garden. I stood looking out over the vast Pacific and asked the universe, “Why do I think everyone knows more than I do?” and the universe replied, “Because you refuse to take responsibility for what you know.” There again, it sounded like the same message only this time I understood it because it was given me in words.

Then about eight years ago, when I started working, training in psychotherapy, Gestalt and Psychosynthesis, I realized art was the language of imagery and feeling and I had a fantastic clarification dream. Again the universe spoke to me. I was like a tiny ant sticking out of the side of the earth and a giant megaphone in the outer space shouted, “Find the image and satisfy it!” No matter what issue we’re working on, it works.

I use this as a guide. It is the basis of my work. The same with problem solving and dream paradoxes. I think it’s absolutely amazing. I wish I had time to share some stories. I will talk abut one piece of art since no one is celebrating art here and it is so important, such a quick helper.

This story is about the successful birth of a threatened baby. The mother was a student in one of my workshops. She was six months pregnant. During this training in working with dreams and self-balancing each student’s body was outlined so they could step outside their body and contemplate the space they took up in the universe.

Then I lead them on a guided trip inside the body to understand what was going on inside, to see how we treat our bodies and observe where strength and blockages are, where creativity is located and dialogue with organs that are complaining or dissatisfied. Then all this new information is drawn into the body outline so we can see it and acknowledge what it’s like to live inside this state. Then we spend the rest of the week working out dialogues and negotiating changes that create a fairer balance, a new commitment to our bodies, more agreement, more cooperation, new alignment. For many it is symbolic surgery and dynamic healing can occur. Divorced organs can get reintegrated and the inner child can find a nurturing home at last.

Well, this young mother-to-be found she had three heavy chains binding her body, restraining all action and flow of energy to her arms and legs so she’d become numb. One chain around her diaphragm was constricting the growth of her baby who said, during its dialogue with her, that it was on the verge of suffocation. On her body map she had no mouth and her throat was full of stones (30, one for each of her years), and blocking the birth canal was an “iron vise.” Using closed eye imaging she asked the body where to begin and her body said, “First, you need to open my eyes.” Please note that only “the self” knows the proper sequence for healing or change. The therapist can only guess and guide and give the power back to the client. I asked her to dialogue with the stones. They were “pellets of anger” which she’d never dared deliver to her father because no one in the family was allowed to oppose her father, who was a survivor of a childhood in the Holocaust death camps. His power over the family, especially his daughter, was supreme. As she was not ready to deliver the stones, she agreed to remove them from her esophagus and keep them at hand until she found words for them, for which she needed a lot more time. In the meantime, she agreed to develop her voice so it could be heard. To undo the numbness she had to drop the shoulder chain, which her body reminded her she could only do if she could remember how to relax. The sequence that led to relaxation was a marvelous detour to Japan, where she remembered she’d last experienced relaxation in the hot tubs. Again, using suggestion, she returned to the source and satisfied the image of numbness. The chain was willing to drop off after the heat activated the immobile arms and legs so she could defend her baby with them.

The sequence goes on and on and each repair was added to this body map until she was in charge of her body. The chain around the diaphragm was a very complex detour that involved demanding the key to the lock from her father, who was used to having everything his way, who it turned out, “owned” her baby and her husband as well as her sexual freedom. I’m telling you this briefly today because she called me before I set out for this conference to say that this baby was successfully born. She was able to dilate only by sitting in a hot shower which she insisted on doing against her doctor’s commands. She had refused to let him take the baby by Caesarian section. She insisted on a hot shower so she could let herself relax and dilate. I wonder how many doctors understand that their patients are the only ones who know the proper sequence of things that must happen before willingness to deliver, heal or change can begin. Lucid awareness is inside us all and we here are the believers, therefore we must be the teachers. Find the image and satisfy it.

Garfield: That’s a very interesting case. We see here then another possible value, in this case in a kind of lucid waking dream. The “dreamer” drew on the wisdom that comes from within and got actual physiological help in achieving important biological processes that she might not have and without this kind of self-reflection. Great!

Gordon Halliday: Clinical Utility Seen in Lucid Dream Ability

Garfield: And, finally we hear from Gordon Halliday who is a psychologist working with a community mental health center in Ohio.

Halliday: I’d like to touch on three areas where I’ve used lucid dreaming in a therapeutic setting. First is for folks with a specific problem of not being able to tell when they’re awake or dreaming. Second, for people with nightmares, particularly recurring traumatic nightmares. Third, for individuals who feel absolutely powerless to make any change in their lives. If they make one change anywhere you get a snow-balling effect, and the potential of lucidity is at least one potential that some people can use to start making that one change. I’ll comment more on that later.

Shortly after Hearne’s list of ten criteria for distinguishing the dreaming state from the wakeful state was published in the May 19, 1982 issue of Lucidity Letter, I had a client who came in for hypnotherapy for weight loss. As part of the initial interview, she mentioned she still had problems telling whether she was awake or dreaming. She had been in therapy about a year previously at the mental health center where I saw her. Her previous therapist said something like, “Grow up, everyone can do that” (distinguish dreams from waking). The therapist’s idea, perhaps, was that this confusion is a fairly normal impasse, occurring at perhaps age five, which most children get through. That is one of the jobs of parents, to help kids separate when they’re awake and when they’re asleep. My client didn’t and it caused her problems, particularly in her social life. She didn’t know, for example, if the conversation she had with somebody yesterday occurred in a dream, or occurred when she was awake. If she thought it occurred in a dream (when it really occurred when awake), naturally she wouldn’t continue it and people would get hostile and say, “Why are you snubbing me?” If it actually occurred in a dream but she thought it occurred in the awake state, she would try to continue the conversation but people would look at her and say, “What are you talking about?”

She was a factory worker who was doing pretty well in other areas of her life but she found that this inability to distinguish dreams from reality caused her some difficulty. She was therefore open to some answers to rectify this situation. As part of our second session with this client, we reviewed with her Hearne’s ten tests for differentiating the dream from the waking state. We gave her a copy of these tests and suggested she review them at home from time to time.

One week later she came back and said she had had a dream and she used one of the criteria (to look carefully at the surroundings and see if there is something that should not be there) to know that it was a dream. That was helpful for her; when she encountered a three- or four-foot rat at her factory, she knew that that was a dream because the Orkin man [exterminator] had been around the previous day and there shouldn’t be any rats at all. It didn’t strike her as strange that the rat was three feet tall. She was very pleased with those results. I’ve had another client since then who has also used Hearne’s criteria and also found them helpful.

The second place where lucidity training has been useful is in traumatic nightmares, with the idea that it’s possible to make a change. Somebody in the audience mentioned Vietnam veterans. I haven’t worked much with Vietnam veterans but one of my colleagues worked extensively with them. I mentioned to him the technique of becoming first aware that you’re dreaming and then making a small change. One of his clients who was a Vietnam veteran had a recurring nightmare of being on a boat exposed to lots of machine-gun fire, and there was nothing he could do. So he was encouraged first to make himself become aware that he was dreaming and then make a small change in the dream. He was encouraged, rather than going for the “biggies,” i.e., dream content stuff with a lot of emotion, to change the color of some of the bushes, change the type of boat, etc. The client found that method marvelous, and as often happens, as soon as he made a small change, the nightmare ended. So this didn’t result in a continued lucid state but at least it resulted in control of the dream and in this case ending the nightmare.

This case was similar to a case that I had with a fellow who had been run over by a tractor about a year before I saw him (this case was published in Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1982, 54, 413–414). He was seen in a hospital on consultation for several reasons. He mentioned that he had nightmares about two or three times a week which replayed the traumatic experience. We encouraged him to become aware of the fact that he was dreaming. Some folks just pick up the idea and run with it once you tell them it its possible. He did that. When we encouraged him to make a small change, his nightmare ended. He then found himself in a pleasant dream, the first one he had in over a year, which was dancing with his wife.

There are some limitations to this technique. For instance, a person was in an industrial accident. He complained of recurrent traumatic nightmares where once again he was on the barge and the factory along the river released the toxic gas which caused his choking and inability to breathe. He woke up very upset. What he wanted was Valium. He simply wasn’t willing to consider other alternatives such as lucidity training or keeping a gas mask around!

Similarly, in another case, a fellow who was seen for disability evaluation had a recurring traumatic nightmare concerning his fall from a factory ceiling. He pointed out that he understood how lucidity training could change his nightmare but his disability payments were so important to him that he didn’t want to change anything that could remotely affect getting disability!

Another class of cases where lucidity training with change instructions has not worked is with those who believe that dreams form a special source of knowledge, particularly prophetic. It is upsetting to these individuals for them to try to change a dream or try to say they are in control of a dream as they felt that dreams are a direct expression of the spirit or of God. One such case was a woman who had married the pastor of a fundamentalist church. She had worked hard at her strict religious beliefs. She didn’t allow television watching because that was “of the world.” Her children weren’t allowed to play football because that was “of the world.” One was supposed to spend all of one’s time contemplating the other world and being dutiful. There was, however, one exception. If she had a prophetic dream, coming not from her but from God, instructing her to be lenient about some church rules, her husband had no choice but to grant her wishes. She was extremely reluctant to even consider that dreams could be lucid or even, for that matter, that they come from the unconscious.

Finally, the third use of lucidity is to empower people to make changes. One client had the presenting problem of “being in a daze.” She had been in a daze for a number of years. For many years she had been extensively abused both physically and sexually by her father and others. She had a mild mental retardation diagnosis, was divorced, had lost her children to Children’s Services, and was in a bad relationship with her boy friend. Because of her childhood abuse, she was terrified of men. She nevertheless wanted to dance with her boy friend. We tried to work out a deconditioning situation in which she gradually got within a foot of a man and then gradually touched him, etc. She never really got involved with that procedure. We talked about her frequent nightmares and suggested that she try to confront and conquer them. She liked that idea, despite not having any prior experience with it, and reported at her fourth session a nightmare of a hand that was trying to choke her and kill some pets. To her surprise she knew that she could make a change in the dream. She took a baseball bat and beat the hand to death, which was very unlike her waking behavior. It was, she said, “the first time I fought back.” She was thrilled with that and subsequently had the determination to successfully dance with her boy friend. Hartmann (The Nightmare, 1984, p. 223) and some others suggest that the change comes first in the personality and then the dream changes, but for this particular patient the nice dream clearly came first. She also did four or five other positive things like watch less television and take walks. Five months after this dream she was still doing relatively well. She was free of nightmares, a situation which she attributed to thinking good things—rather than upsetting things—prior to sleep.

Patricia Garfield: When and For Whom Is Lucidity Appropriate? P

Garfield: Gordon has added some things for us to consider. We’ve already mentioned a lot of the values of lucid dreaming, provided the skill is developed, but also we need to consider what is the appropriate population for lucid dreaming. Gordon has just mentioned three cases where it doesn’t apply, people who are getting secondary benefits from their “nonlucid” dreams, such as receiving disability payments or controlling your husband. It then becomes difficult if not impossible to interest them in the idea of lucid dreaming.

We might also consider, is lucidity just for us normals versus neurotics? Can lucid dream training be used with a psychotic individual? Can it be used with children equally as well as with adults?

Assuming you can make a difference, we also need to look at what specifically are the desirable responses in a lucid dream. Some have been suggested and Gordon just added another. Just make a small change, don’t go for the “biggie”; just change the color of the boat. Begin little.

Is it best to confront a hostile dream figure—and one can confront just by saying, “Hey, cut it out” or staring into their eyes or resisting or demolishing them completely with a baseball bat? Is that better, in some instances, than getting help? Or should one befriend a hostile dream figure, or integrate with a dream figure? There are many options we can take. Some people take sides, “This is no good, this is the only right way to do it.” I wonder if there aren’t specific occasions where specific things are called for, depending on the circumstances of the dreamer. I’d be interested in the panel’s thoughts on this.

Discussion

Malamud: I’d like to comment on that last question about what’s appropriate to do in a dream. This is a personal value: what’s appropriate to do in a dream is what makes you happy, and that’s what I try to teach people to do in their lucid dreams or in their lucid fantasies. I work mostly with teaching people to be lucid in their fantasies.

I think there are differences in the degree to which certain actions can be called lucid. For example, those who choose to counterattack a dream enemy are lucid perhaps to the extent that they realize that they are dreaming, but they’re not realizing an important implication of that fact, that is, they’re safe; there’s no way that their physical body can be harmed by this image. In order to become more lucid, they have to realize that there’s no need to counterattack. I have found, in working with a couple of my dissertation subjects—I had six subjects that I worked with intensively—that the stage of counterattack was a useful one for learning that you really are safe! In other words, it seemed the subjects had to learn that they had power in the dream, that they could control things, that they could defend themselves and go through the phase of counterattack enough to really realize they were safe and that defense was not necessary. Then the next phase would be friendly encounter: “Who are you? What can you tell me about myself?” But that didn’t happen until they got over being afraid. If you keep in mind that the enemy dream image is a reflection of some aspect of self, then defending against it is also a process of learning, “I’m not going to be overwhelmed; I can keep this aspect of myself under control.” Once it’s under control, “Okay, now I’ll talk to you; now I’ll find out who you are and what you have to teach me.”

Garfield: We might postulate a developmental situation. Paul Tholey’s work on comparing different types of responses to a hostile dream figure is very interesting. He feels that a conciliatory behavior is most effective. But I noted that he used conciliation after he had used a lot of confronting.

Wiseman: I think that it’s very important that the victim reconnect with that fear after making himself safe now that he has empowered himself. The enemy often reflects a polarized position in oneself. Therapy can help people modify. Most of us are just “either/or,” we don’t automatically exercise the options in the middle.

Garfield: I think that one of the things that we need to work out as explorers in this dream field is this very kind of thing. Do we need the power? I would say, yes. This is my own personal bias, so I’m not really sure if I’m right or not, but it’s what works for me. I think that there are stages beyond that are important to move to, including integration with whatever figure you need to have. Paul Tholey’s work is important and is moving in the direction of making sense out of this question. How do we build a hierarchy? How do we make these choices?

Campbell: I’d like to respond. I’ve not only worked with a lot of groups of people in the area of lucidity, but for a couple of years we did a call-in radio talk show, with groups of people talking about lucidity with each other. I don’t think there is an appropriate group. I don’t think that it’s a judgment that I feel comfortable making for somebody else. That is, I feel that the powers, or the word that we’ve been using here—personal powers, ability of the individual to be creative or whatever—I think it’s something that is inherent. We traditionally have not looked at it, not allowed ourselves. As you were saying, children have appeared to have the ability. I was teaching a high school class once and mentioned the idea of lucidity. I was grading papers the next day and one of the kids came in and said, “It works.”
I said, “What works?”

She said, “I looked at my hands and it works just fine.” No trying to learn how to be lucid or anything. Just a matter of very natural “working.” Although I think there’s usefulness in support, and if you’re talking about people who are psychotic or people who are very afraid, there’s a need for support groups. I don’t think it’s necessary to limit who can do these dream techniques.

Audience Question: Would you see the use of such techniques as coming from one’s personal interest in the topic, or could it be used with any group?

Campbell: With the radio show God knows who was listening in at any particular time, or what kind of people they were, but I know they were excited. In the hour in which we dealt with dreams and lucidity the phones were all lit up.

I’d like to give some speculations on the personal use of lucid dream techniques. I haven’t worked with enough people to be able to really know, but I would think that readiness for lucidity and the ability to benefit from lucidity would cut across these categories of normals, neurotics, psychotics, children, and adults. I agree that what would be essential is wanting the lucid attitude. That is, wanting to be aware of your power to create reality. Wanting to know yourself better by recognizing yourself as you’re reflected in what you experience around you. Wanting to feel that you have freedom. We all, to some extent, want to hide from what we create, from the fact that we do have input into our situations. We want to hide from who we are and can be terrified by facing some aspects of ourselves. Often, paradoxically, we want to feel that we have no choice, that situations are forced on us. In my experience working with people, I’ve found that those are the kinds of obstacles you come up against. If you focus on those three aspects of lucidity, people become very aware of what their resistances are and become more free and more aware of their power.

Garfield: That’s all the time we have today for touching on these issues but they are definitely ones to take home with us from the conference and to use in our own settings. Those of you who have read Theodore Roszak’s The Dream Watcher, perhaps got a flash as some of these people were talking. He proposes that dreaming can go a long way and that it can really change the world.

##### VI.A.2 Some Relations Between Clinical and Transpersonal Approaches to Dreams

HARRY HUNT

Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada

The complex relations between clinical (more or less psychoanalytic) and “transpersonal” approaches to dreams can be clarified by the notion that there are natural varieties in dreaming experience and that these may suggest appropriate ways of using dreams. In other words we can use and/or interpret dreams with or against their own natural grain.
I’ll start with the existential approach of Erik Craig and his colleagues (as exemplified in Psychotherapy for Freedom, a Spring, 1988 special issue of The Humanistic Psychologist). Its strength is its emphasis on dream experience as such—prior to any different dream forms or interpretive strategies. The dream exemplifies our mode of being-in-the-world, as oneself, with others, and ahead of ourselves in the curiously open dimension of lived time. For Heidegger there are two ways we can “face” within our being-in-the-world—although since each is complementary and implied by the other the present separation will have its artificialities. First we can locate a mode of everydayness, where our embeddedness in daily projects shields us from the openness of time, at the price of a forgetfulness of our sense of Being. Then there is the mode of openness, our potential to sense being-as-such. Heidegger implies that such “being experiences” are the spontaneous core of mystical experience. They confer a powerful sense of presencing—a feeling of “being real.”
Already we can see that Deirdre Barrett’s approach to dreams, based on Freud’s views of disguise and repression, is dreaming within the mode of everydayness and that Jayne Gackenbach’s descriptions of the immediate subjective power of lucid dreams mark them as potential experiences of being in Heidegger’s sense (Barrett, 1989; Gackenbach, 1989).
Following Craig, each of these ways of facing might be said to have its own “constraints” and its own specific “potentialities”—which indeed may help to understand how the attitudes of everydayness and transcendence are ultimately complementary and necessary to each other (Craig, 1989). I mean this in Kierkegaard’s sense, where the despair of finitude is the lack of infinity and the despair of infinity is lack of finitude. The psychoanalysts Kohut and Winnicott distinguish between two forms of conflict which would show the negative or constrained side of each of these “ways of facing”—and which more generally show more than an analogy with Hartmann’s distinction between thick and thin boundaries (Hartmann, 1984). Thus, Freud’s unconscious and repression point to the mode of conflict within the heart of everydayness, where we defend ourselves against the dilemmas of love and work. Narcissistic dilemmas and self pathologies would correspondingly appear as the conflicted side of what D.W. Winnicott termed the “dimension of being,” where grandiosity, idealization, and withdrawal block a potential for feeling real, alive, and present.
We can illustrate this dialectic through a brief look at the actual dreams of Freud and Jung, where verydifferent methods of using the dream are a natural outcome of the kind of dreams each had. Freud’s own dreams are clouded, fragmented, and vague, with numerous sudden changes in scene. No wonder he used free association to further deconstruct what was already in process of dissolving into a complex of everyday memories, hopes, and fears. Consider his dream of old Brucke. He dreams that his first physiology teacher has set him the task of dissecting his own pelvis. He sees it eviscerated, fishes out bits of tinfoil (that later in his free associations remind him of his early study of the nervous system of fish). His friend Louise N. helps him (later he is reminded of her challenge to him to produce his own book). Abruptly he finds himself in a cab being driven into a house and out again. Then he is being carried by a guide into mountains, where he sees Indians (later reminding him of Rider Haggard’s She, which he loaned to Louise N.). Finally, there is a house on the other side of a chasm and he realizes he is supposed to cross over to it on the bodies of children (Freud, 1900).
Freud’s free associations take him, as ever, into his intensely political world of scientific recognition, reputation, and would-be fame. He largely ignores what later psychoanalysts like Richard Jones and dreamworkers like Delaney or Ullman would see as the dream’s positive potential for emergent metaphors expressing on-going life issues, beyond issues of disguise, showing the dream’s inherent possibilities of disclosure. Here we can see self dissection as a marvelous metaphor for the rigors and limitations of Freud’s self analysis (which he mentions), and the bodies of children as the text of psychoanalytic discourse—or Craig’s treatment of Freud’s Irma dream as a poetic depiction of his later concepts of transference and resistance (Craig, 1988).
There is even less hint in Freud of that dimension of dreaming filled out by Jungians and lucid dreamers, where we find an openness to an immediate sense of totality and wholeness. Although we could follow Grinstein’s approach to Freud’s dreams (Grinstein, 1980) and (in Freud’s associations only) find some distant allusion to his identification with Moses or even see some hint within this dream of his later preoccupation with narcissism and thanatos, as precursors of notions of self pathology.
Jung’s dreams are as coherent and subjectively powerful as Freud’s are fragmented and allusive. We find vivid detail, numinosity and ineffably significant encounters. No wonder Jung stayed with and amplified dreams already so full of felt significance and portent—although this approach may be ultimately as one-sided as Freud’s transpersonal blind spot.
Consider Jung’s dream of being with his deceased father in the court of Sultan Akbar the Great, in a vast hall shaped like a geometric mandala pattern—Jung’s symbol of wholeness of self. His father indicates the room above, where lives the “highest presence,” Uriah, the Hebrew general betrayed by David. Jung tries to bow his head to the floor, along with his father, but he can’t quite manage it (Jung, 1961).
For Jung this dream has a directly given archetypal or transpersonal significance. It also anticipates, he says, his later Answer to Job, where he discusses how a creature can surpass its creator by virtue of the capacity to doubt. Jung totally ignores what leaps out if one knows anything of his life—his potential guilt over his relation with his father and later with Freud, as the betrayed Hebrew general. Indeed, Winnicott suggests that a mark of those persons where the dilemma of being and feeling real predominates is failure to experience or recognize guilt.
It is within these very different modes of dreamt being-in-the-world that we can locate Barrett’s and Gackenbach’s recent research.
Clearly, each form or dimension of dreaming would have its own characteristic constraints andpotentialities for genuine development. Barrett concentrates on the constrained end of ordinary normative dreaming, with its clouding, confusion and hallucinatory intrusions. She manages to locate experimentally the defensive constellation at the core of Freud’s theory of dreaming. One of her measures of repression correlates with low dream recall and shorter length. What needs defending against here becomes clear if we follow Van de Castle and Hall on the typical “Oedipal” structure of dreams—negative relationships with members of the same sex, positive with the opposite sex, and for male dreamers considerable aggression from older men (Hall & Van de Castle, 1966). It is interesting that Barrett reports higher sexual and aggressive content from the dreams of high repressors—typically initiated by the dream others. Craig might see this as part of the thrownness or facticity of the everyday mode. (Certainly it is also of interest that Hall found an inverse or negative Oedipal pattern in Freud’s dreams, perhaps hinting at the later necessity of developing a model of narcissism and the barriers Freud would face in that attempt. Meanwhile, the dreams of Jung show the more typical Oedipal configuration that he may not have faced as fully as his more personally compelling path of individuation).
There is of course a positive, expressive pole of “dreamt everydayness,” where defensiveness is minimal and dreamworkers look for creative metaphoric insights into specific dilemmas. Here we might find, in Barrett’s terms, those subjects with higher manifest anxiety and capacity to tolerate imaginative absorption, at least in some contexts.
The dimension anchored by Barrett’s research is very different from the form of dreaming studied by Gackenbach, where lucid dreaming is a subjective “empowerment” directly conveying a sense of openness and feeling real. Here an experiential impact predominates over specific personal insights to be gained from the dream.
Gackenbach concentrates first on the positive potentialities of this dimension—its own “freedom.” She places lucid dreaming in the context of meditation, in terms of cognitive psychology, physiology, and phenomenology. We see the same development in lucid dreaming and meditation of a contemplative, receptive attitude and the same vividness and sense of immediacy that Heidegger called “presencing” and Maslow termed “peak experience” or “being experience.” Gackenbach has also located the cognitive factors associated with lucid dreaming—imaginative absorption, vivid imagery, visual-spatial skills, and physical balance. I found the same measures associated with subjects who dream in an archetypal form and, indeed, the same nonverbal visual-spatial skills predict responsiveness to meditative techniques and proclivity to spontaneous mystical experience. These states, dreaming and awake, seem to entail a symbolic intelligence that falls outside the linguistic construction of everyday social existence (Hunt, 1989). And for Heidegger our most direct expressions of sense of Being-as-such are “presentational,” not representational.
However, Gackenbach also calls our attention to some unintended consequences of an exclusive absorption with lucid dreaming that involve much of what Kohut and Winnicott term self pathology and narcissism. Indeed, we can start to see a parallel between miscarriages of lucid dreaming and the self dilemmas that can constrain long term meditative practice. Engler has shown how grandiosity, lack of a sense of self, and/or withdrawal can be mistaken by some for the goals of meditation, while Wilber has suggested that the experience of the numinous—with its fascination and power—can actually create similar narcissistic vulnerabilities (Engler, 1984; Wilber, 1984).
Gackenbach shows how lucid dreaming can miscarry in these same ways. Thus we find the potential sense of openness and releasement that can come with lucidity instead deflected into inflation andgrandiosity. Craig has located something like this in the over-emphasis in some lucidity research on control, perhaps demonstrating the inability of such researchers to accept the thrownness and limitation inherent in any developmental path. In addition some experienced lucid dreamers begin to report panic attacks and grotesque nightmares, as the dread denied by defensive idealization and grandiosity breaks through—not despite, but because of exaggerated efforts at control. Finally, preoccupation with the “powers” of lucidity—what Kastrinidis in Psychotherapy for Freedom in another context calls the premature “being one” with beauty and wholeness—can be associated with a narcissistic flight from the real complexities of everydayness, masking despair and futility.

Conclusions

We can locate from the present perspective two dimensions of dreaming and methods of using them—a dimension exemplifying pragmatic relating and doing, and a dimension of openness to Being. Each would have its own developmental stages and forms of relative constraint and pathology or fullest expression and realization. Dreaming, like much of living, would be a developmental dialectic across these dimensions.
Freud’s own dreams and Barrett’s research show the first dimension, Jung’s own dreams and the research of Gackenbach and myself show the second. With regard to Freud and Jung the blind spot of one is the special strength and open possibility of the other. Jung misses the dilemmas of love and work that pervade Freud’s dreams and dream interpretations, Freud misses the possibility of an open self-validating dimension that intuits wholeness and Being.
With respect to dreaming in both the therapeutic and transpersonal traditions, dreams will be encountered which in their disorganization, confusion and brevity ask to have their defensiveness and disguise undone. At the other extreme of this dimension there will be dreams whose direct presentation of creative metaphors in the manifest dream offer new insights into specific life issues. There is another dimension of dreaming where we find “self-state” expressions of narcissistic dilemma—whether in terms of overly rigid idealizations and illusory perfections or persecutory and grotesque horrors. Here dreams split apart the fusion of uncanny dread and open releasement in Heidegger’s version of “Being-experiences.” At the other extreme from dreams thus caught in narcissism, there are those spontaneous dreams—often lucid—where a “calm abiding,” receptivity, and resulting sense of energy and clarity become temporary approximations to the goals of the Eastern meditative traditions. Of course, the same dream may shift across these forms of expression.
Finally, at times reports of no dreaming will reflect that dimension whose pole is anchored in Freud’s repression. On other occasions, it will not be a lack of recall of probably existent dreams, but an actual inability to stand the tension and dilemma in sense of self involved in having any dream experience at all—leading to those blank and stuporous states in place of REM dreams that would be the true opposite of lucid dreaming, just as they are the ultimate failure of meditative practice.

References

Barrett, D. (1989). Dream recall and content as a function of defensiveness. Lucidity Letter,

Craig, E. (Ed.). (1988). Psychotherapy for freedom: The daseinanalytic way in psychology and psychoanalysis. Special issue of The Humanistic Psychologist, 16(1).

Craig, E. (1989). The phenomenological use of dreams in psychotherapy. Lucidity Letter, 8(2), 60–61.

Engler, J. (1984). Therapeutic aims in psychotherapy and meditation. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 16, 25–61.

Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. New York: Avon Books.

Gackenbach, J. (1989). Clinical applications for consciousness in sleep. Lucidity Letter, 8(2), 62–68.

Grinstein, A. (1980). Sigmund Freud’s dreams. New York: International Universities Press.

Hall, C.S. & Van de Castle, R.L. (1966). The content analysis of dreams. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Hartmann, E. (1984). The nightmare. New York: Basic Books.

Hunt, H.T. (1989). The multiplicity of dreams: Memory, imagination, consciousness. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.

Jung, C.G. (1961). Memoirs, dreams, reflections. New York: Pantheon Books.

Wilber, K. (1984). The developmental perspective and psychopathology, part I. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 16, 75–118.

##### VI.A.3 Training For Lucid Awareness in Dreams, Fantasy, and Waking Life

JUDITH MALAMUD

New York, New York

In this paper, I would like to focus on lucidity as a concept, and on lucidity training as a means of fostering psychological growth.
What makes dreams seem so strange? My work with lucidity grew out of my desire to overcome, in myself, first of all, that paradoxical split in consciousness wherein I “know” that my dreaming is uniquely self-expressive and reflects my deepest personal concerns, yet I frequently do not understand my own dreams. Many of us who are mystified and fascinated by dreams like to think of dreams as precious gifts to be opened, sacred texts to be faithfully recorded and analyzed, or secret coded messages, sent from one “part” of the self to another “part” of the self, to be decoded and translated. These metaphors, though enchanting, are misleading, because they make dreams seem like things we receive from elsewhere, rather than creative action (Schafer, 1976) that we undertake as unified beings. My approach to lucidity training aims to overcome this kind of alienation from self by fostering awareness of ourselves as active dream-creators, of the cognitive and emotional processes by which we create dreams, and of the unique safety of the imagination as space for acquainting ourselves with all of our human psychological potentials. What would it mean to be able to dream consciously? It would mean being at one with oneself, fusing spontaneity with purpose, and acting freely with full awareness.
Just as I would rather learn to paint than study “art appreciation,” so would I rather learn to dream than study dream interpretation. Interpretative approaches may increase the ability to understand dreams, but by requiring that the dreamer take the stance of audience to the dream, they reinforce the dreamer’s sense of alienation from his or her own creation. I found that I would have to go beyond interpretative approaches to my dreams in order to work toward my aim of being able to dream the way I can paint or dance—freely and spontaneously, yet with creative purpose and full awareness that I am the creator of my experience. In lucidity training, I use active fantasy, which requires a participatory stance. By using fantasy as a bridge between the waking and dreaming modes, lucidity training is hands-on practice in conscious “dreaming” during the waking state, and tends to facilitate a direct awareness of one’s own intended meanings.

Aspects of Full Lucidity

I find lucidity in dreams so intriguing because it provides a model for expanded awareness. However, minimal lucidity—realizing you are dreaming during a dream —does not yet amount to much. In order to explore the possibilities of lucid dreaming, you still need to clarify what kind of reality the dream is, how dream reality differs from waking reality, and what unique opportunities it offers. I differentiated three characteristics of dream experience which the dreamer must keep in mind in order to be fully lucid:

1. The creative source. You are the primary creator of your dream world and dream experience.

2. The connection between self and environment. The apparent separation between yourself and your dream environment is an illusion. In creating your dream images, you are expressing yourself and unique perceptions of reality.

3. Alternate realities (LeShan, 1976). Your dream experience is but one subjective reality contained within the larger reality of the waking world. As an alternate reality, the dream offers different possibilities and limitations from those of ordinary waking life. Within the dream, you can choose among alternative ways of structuring and responding to your experience.

Lucidity in Fantasy and Waking Life

While lucidity in dreams obviously offers exciting possibilities for experimentation and self-confrontation, what excites me even more is the realization that the concept of lucid awareness can be extended to apply to fantasy and waking reality as well (Malamud, 1982). The essence of lucidity, in any state of consciousness, is awareness of the subjective aspects of a seemingly objective reality. Fantasy, like dreaming, is an internal, imaginary form of reality, and therefore full lucidity during fantasy involves awareness of essentially the same three characteristics as those I just stated for dreams.
Although waking reality is significantly different from the imaginary realities, in that it involves more objective and concrete elements, lucidity in waking life is analogous to dream lucidity and involves awareness of three parallel characteristics:

1. The creative source. You are continuously contributing to the creation of your waking world and waking experience.

2. The connection between self and environment. The apparent separation between yourself and your waking environment is an illusion. As an interdependent co-creator of your waking experience, you are continuously expressing yourself and your unique perceptions of reality.

3. Alternate realities. Your waking experience is one, relatively subjective reality which offers different possibilities and limitations from those of the more encompassing reality you might experience if you “awakened” from your ordinary waking life. Within waking reality, you can choose among alternative ways of structuring and responding to your experience.

Lucidity Training

In 1979, I completed a doctoral dissertation (Malamud, 1979) in which I differentiated these three aspects of lucid awareness, extended the concept of lucidity to apply to the fantasy and waking states, devised continua to define levels of lucidity, and developed procedures for lucidity training. In the principal training procedure, subjects “re-dreamed” their dream lucidly, during waking fantasy, with the aim of increasing their satisfaction in the dream. I hypothesized that practicing the lucid attitude and consciously striving for satisfaction during these dream-inspired fantasies, or waking dreams, would result in both increased lucidity, and a greater capacity to achieve satisfaction when confronting problems and opportunities not only in waking dreams, but also in sleep-dreams and in waking life.
I explored this hypothesis through an in-depth study of six subjects, using a dialectical rather than classically experimental research design. That is, I used feedback from the subjects to revise and improve the lucidity training methods as the study progressed, giving particular attention to the varied capacitiesof each subject.
The subjects were sent orientation materials and training instructions for having lucid waking dreams, including a lucidity training manual, an outline of the lucidity continuum, and a lucidity checklist. The checklist covered five dream situations in which a dreamer might benefit from lucidity: “problematic relationships,” “threatening situations,” “frustrating situations,” “improprieties” and “impossibilities.”
The subjects were instructed to mail me at least one dream each week, with lucidity work, for eight to twelve weeks. I responded with detailed feedback letters offering suggestions for heightening awareness of dream feelings, becoming more fully lucid, and working toward more satisfying resolutions of dream situations.
The criteria that I used to assess changes in the subjects were self-report and my own observations of 22 variables, including lucidity, satisfaction, attitudes toward the imagination, and values concerning personal growth. The raw data, which consisted of taped interviews and written correspondence between me and the subjects, is extensively quoted in the dissertation.
The most frequent result was that the subjects became more lucid in their waking fantasies. That is, they became more aware of their imaginative power and creativity, they behaved more freely, fearlessly, and uninhibitedly during their fantasies, and they gained insight into themselves by recognizing the self-reflecting nature of their own imagery. There were less data available to assess whether changes occurred in the subjects’ sleep-dreams, waking lives, and other outcome categories, but there too, the results encouraged me to believe that with further development and refinement of the training methods, lucidity training could be very effective in increasing awareness and satisfaction in living.

Common Concerns About Lucidity

My thinking about lucidity has continuously been stimulated by dialogue with subjects and colleagues who often raise questions and objections. Here are some of the concerns that come up most frequently, and a brief summary of my current views:

Question: Is it not possible that if we give free play to our fantasies, won’t we be flooded by unacceptable thoughts and feelings that may lead us to behave immorally or irrationally?

Ordinarily, no. Awareness of a wish does not automatically lead to action; choice and decision intervene. We may be more likely to act inappropriately on our irrational or immoral motives if we are unaware of them. Becoming conscious of our wishes enables us to choose consciously whether and how we will act on them. An exception: people who have difficulty telling the difference between their fantasies and reality probably will not want to attempt lucidity training unless others are available to provide support and help with reality-testing.

Question: One of the most valuable and delightful qualities of dreams is their spontaneity. If we learn to direct our dreams consciously, won’t we lose that spontaneity?

Unlikely. The development of the capacity for conscious control does not necessitate indiscriminate use of that capacity. Lucid dreamers can allow their dreams to proceed spontaneously, if they prefer.

Question: Isn’t there a danger that lucidity training, by teaching us to control the unconscious mind, may stifle its wisdom and impose the one-sided attitudes and values of the conscious mind?

No. In the first place, it is a mistake to equate ordinary dreaming with purely unconscious behavior. Most dreams involve both conscious and unconscious processes. For example, one may be aware of deciding how to respond to a dream situation, without being aware that one is also creating that situation at that very moment.
Secondly, as a dreamer, one acts as a unity and dreams what one predominantly wants to dream, whether consciously or not, within the limits of what one believes is possible, given one’s perception of reality. Conscious intentions will not prevent the expression, in some form, of stronger, opposing unconscious wishes.
Finally, I think it is a mistake to assume that ordinary, nonlucid dreams necessarily offer a wiser or deeper picture of personal reality than do lucid, consciously created dreams or one’s conscious waking thoughts. While the spontaneity of ordinary dreaming may break through the inhibitions and self-censorship of waking life, it frequently does not. Why? Because the nonlucid dreamer falsely assumes she or he is awake, and therefore subject to all the limitations and moral taboos of waking life. On the other hand, when we dream with maximum lucidity, we are aware that we do not have to be bound by such limitations, and we therefore have the maximum opportunity to give free play to our imaginations for self-discovery without inhibition or self-deception. As an example, consider the nonlucid dreamer who shies away from acting on, or even admitting, sexual feeling during a dream because the situation would seem improper—for waking life. The same dreamer, if lucid, would feel free to explore and enjoy his or her own sensual feelings during the dream, without fear of waking-life consequences.

Question: Is it not unrealistic to believe that one can ever have total conscious control in dreams?

Yes. Since the development of awareness is a gradual process with no end-point, and since dreaming, like any other activity, is meditated by many situational factors, the concept of total lucidity is offered here as a theoretical ideal.

Question: Is one really totally safe in dreams?

Dream imagery often expresses fears that are valid responses to real threats. However, threatening dream images are not the real dangers they represent. This lucid perspective enables one to take the threatening life situation as seriously as is about the situation to experiment fearlessly with creative responses.

Question: Doesn’t the practice of lucid fantasy, like ordinary daydreaming, encourage retreat into a world of imaginary gratifications?

On the contrary, lucid fantasy, unlike ordinary daydreaming, inherently leads to facing oneself more realistically as one consciously confronts one’s own projections in one’s imagery. Like ordinary daydreaming, lucid imagining can be used to rehearse positive behaviours and to develop life-shaping aspirations.

Applications for Lucidity Training

The ultimate value of lucidity is its potential to increase satisfaction in living. Because lucidity and the pursuit of satisfaction enhance each other synergistically, lucidity training incorporated satisfaction as a goal and as a continuously monitored felt sense (Gendlin, 1981). Some of my subjects could not, at first,achieve clarity about their actual feelings, values and desires because they were irrationally afraid of having any thoughts or feelings which they considered “bad,” and were too busy censoring their spontaneous reactions. Maximal lucidity, which involves the thorough-going knowledge that imagining and acting-in-the world are not the same, leads to the realization that it is both useful and safe to use dreams and fantasies to strip away conventional restraints and to use one’s spontaneous reactions of satisfaction and dissatisfaction as a source of inner guidance. Because lucidity involves recognition of one’s creative powers, of alternative possibilities, and of previously unrecognized inner potentials, it also increases the likelihood of obtaining satisfaction. Conversely, a satisfaction-seeking orientation, by continually posing the question, “How can I make the best of this situation?” acts as a stimulus to creativity and provides motivation to apply lucid-awareness.
Lucidity training could be integrated into psychotherapy, where specific applications might include the treatment of nightmares and phobias. I have been particularly interested in developing group exercises to foster shaping, mutual helpfulness and intimacy among friends, couples, family members, and workshop participants. I would predict that many students of lucidity training will find, once they have consolidated all the basic principles and techniques, that they can continue to use the method on their own. Lucidity training can also be used as a path for spiritual growth. The clearing away, through lucidity, of cobwebs of projection, can lead to a newly vivid and profound perception of oneself and others, whether in dreams, fantasies, or waking life, may ultimately foster a cherishing of the precious qualities of each individual being.

References

Gendlin, E.T. (1981). Focusing (2nd ed.). New York: Bantam.

LeShan, L. (1976). Alternate realities: the search for the full human being. New York: Evans.

Malamud, J.R. (1979). The development of a training method for the cultivation of “lucid” awareness in fantasy, dreams, and waking life (doctoral dissertation). Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, Order No. 8010380.

Malamud, J.R. (1982). Lucidity in waking life. Dream Network Bulletin, 1(5).

Schafer, R. (1976). A new language for psychoanalysis. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.

Editor’s Note: This paper was presented at the American Psychological Association Annual Convention, Symposium on Lucid Dreaming, August 27, 1982, Washington, D.C.

##### VI.A.4 Limitations in the Utility of Lucid Dreaming and Dream Control as Techniques for Treating Nightmares

KATHRYN BELICKI

Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada

In the past several years I have been studying nightmares and in that context have examined the factors that prompt people to seek treatment for these experiences. Given that over the years, many articles in Lucidity Letter have addressed the positive and negative aspects of lucidity and dream control, I thought I would add my reflections on this issue with respect to treating nightmares.
As an aside let me begin noting that I separate dream lucidity from dream control for the very simple reason that they are quite unrelated (if not negatively related) in my own experience. I exercise a fairly high degree of control in my nightmares almost always in the absence of any lucidity. On the other hand I periodically experience lucid dreams (rather mundane ones I must admit) but in these am usually simply aware that I am dreaming and do not act to control the experience. I have tried in a few lucid dreams to be controlling of the experience; in some the dream quickly turned malevolent, in others the dream scenery promptly faded or became achromatic. This differentiation between control and lucidity is not particularly important to my thoughts as outlined below, but I include it because of the growing documentation (and I have seen it in my clients) that these experiences can lead to what could be described as unpleasant side effects. It seems to me that we need to know more about this and I find myself wondering if this unpleasantness is a side effect of lucidity, control, either or both. From an applied perspective (e.g., of treating nightmares) this would be very useful information.
Turning to nightmares, let me begin by summarizing what we know about why people seek help for these dreams. The first thing to note is that many people who have nightmares are not very distressed by them even though their dreams are as unpleasant as those who are distressed. Certainly during the nightmare everyone is unhappy, but after the dream is over people differ tremendously in the amount of upset they subsequently experience. This gives us an important clue: it may not be that the dream is the problem so much as it is the person’s reaction to the dream.
Before examining what leads to these differing reactions we also need to consider different types of nightmares. We have a lot more to learn in this area, but there a few distinctions that are worth noting. Some nightmares are clearly post-traumatic in nature in that they began after a trauma and the content of the nightmare is clearly linked to the traumatic event. In the simple case of these nightmares beginning immediately after the trauma, they are often part of the person’s natural reaction and they tend to go away spontaneously as the reaction is worked through. Alternatively, techniques directed toward changing the nightmare, such as desensitization to the content, often are swiftly successful. In the more complex situation in which the nightmares (and waking symptoms) persist in a chronic fashion and/orbegin several months to several years after the event, these symptoms are usually part of a larger picture of a poor psychosocial adjustment and massive sleep disturbance. In this case treatment is very difficult no matter what the approach.
A second type of nightmare to note are those which are secondary to a physical condition such as disease, medication, drugs, etc. Given the possibility of these, I always have my clients undergo a thorough medical examination.
The nightmares I spend most of my time studying are those creative dreams which often occur throughout the person’s lifetime from childhood onwards. While the predominant emotion is frequently terror, it may also be another such as rage, grief or guilt. I have become aware that some of these are hidden post traumatic nightmares. For example in the case of individuals who have been sexually abused as children, they often do not dream explicitly about the sexual abuse and therefore their nightmares can go unrecognized as being post traumatic in origin. Similarly in two cases Denis Belicki and I have treated, in which the people spontaneously started having nightmares as an adult without any prior history of nightmares, and without any detectable physical contributors, nor any awareness of precipitating trauma, we subsequently uncovered in therapy a precipitating traumatic event, the traumatic nature of which had not been consciously appreciated by the client. It may be important to detect such hidden post traumatic dreams as it has been my increasing experience that the distress attached to these experiences does not resolve until the person gains insight into, and works through, the impact of the precipitating trauma.
Finally, we are left with those long-standing, creative nightmares which do not appear to originate in major trauma or a physical condition. The key to treatment here lies in the difference between people who are very distressed with these experiences and those who are able to live with them quite well. From my research and clinical experience it would appear that distressed people have one or more of the following characteristics:

1. They take their dreams too seriously;

2. They have difficulty containing the emotion of the dream, or distracting themselves from it, after awakening; and/or

3. They are experiencing a great deal of life stress and/or have problems in their waking psychosocial adjustment.

Let us consider each individually.

Taking Dreams Too Seriously

What do I mean by too seriously? I have several things in mind here. One example is the person whose waking life is in fine order but simply because they have nightmares, concludes there is something terribly wrong with themselves or their lives. The problem is that they are assuming both that dreams are always profoundly meaningful and that the emotional “volume” of the dream is to be fully trusted. My own opinion on these issues is that dreams, like waking thoughts, can deal with quite trivial issues. Secondly, the nature of dream experience—its strong tendency toward single-mindedness with corresponding lack of proportion, its perceived reality, its lack of concern for the constraints of reality, etc.—means that the emotional volume can be very easily inflated: the quality of the emotions can be trusted but not necessarily its strength.
Similarly the person who assumes that all dreams are deeply meaningful, and correspondingly feel that their waking thought and judgment has very little merit is at considerable risk to be disturbed by nightmares. Such an attitude becomes particularly problematical if they tend to always take their dreams literally and not metaphorically. For example, individuals have described to me cutting off relationships, usually for a short period of time, simply because a person behaved despicably in their dream. While dreams do occasionally provide direct insight into interpersonal dynamics, these individuals need to be taught (or reminded) about the possible metaphoric or symbolic nature of dream content.
People who feel they have prophetic dreams can be deeply disturbed by nightmares. An example is a woman I spoke with briefly on two occasions. The first time I spoke to her she had not driven a car in ten years because she had had a nightmare about driving a car which had seats that turned into grave stones. This dream haunted her because on other occasions she had had dreams which had seemed prophetic. In my conversation with her I pointed out that:

1. No one has dreams that are always prophetic (and she agreed that most of her dreams were not);

2. Dreams can be metaphoric so that this could be “death” of another kind; and

3. Everyone has tragedy in their lives and everyone dies, and that to be overly preoccupied with these facts only reduces the quality of life.

This initial conversation lasted only 15 to 20 minutes. A year later she contacted me to let me know that she had resumed driving after our conversation. Furthermore, a subsequent encounter with a car like the one in her dream had led to an event which she felt was the fulfillment of the original dream. It did involve a “death” but of the metaphoric variety, and in fact was a very happy outcome for her.
With all these individuals, the problem is not the nightmare itself, but their attitudes and reactions to the nightmares. If we were to quickly strive to teach these people how to control or change nightmares, we would not only overlook the real issue but in the long term might even exacerbate the issue. Specifically, while in the short term we might treat these individuals’ distress by giving them greater control over the experience, if they turn out to be one of those who in the long term develop unpleasantness as a side effect of lucidity or control, they would be uniquely unequipped to handle that distress as evident in their original distress. It seems to make much more sense to first of all teach people how to comfortably live with the unpleasant dream experience before exposing them to techniques which occasionally result in more unpleasantness.
As a final aside, if the individual truly wishes to eliminate the distressing content rather than focus on their reactions, there are techniques which are usually much faster than inducing control or lucidity: sleeping with a light on, daily practice of deep relaxation, systematic desensitization, waking rehearsal of the dream changing the ending to a more positive one, etc.

Difficulty Containing the Emotion of the Dream

Creative individuals who are hypnotizable and tend to become engrossed in fantasy and aesthetic stimuli (a tendency called “absorption” in the literature) are prone to nightmares. Such high absorbers tend to get very emotionally involved in events they attend to: these are the individuals who get totally wrapped up in books and movies, experiencing them as real. It is not surprising that after they awaken from a nightmare, they have difficulty distracting themselves from the experience, and the emotion can extend right into the next day. This is very similar to the issue discussed above: the nightmare is not the problemso much as the reaction to the nightmare. The reaction however, is not caused by attitudes but by an attentional style driven by personality. Again I think a treatment strategy directed toward changing the dream is misguided here. These individuals need to be taught how to control or “box” their emotions and imagination, and how to distract themselves from the memory of their dream.

Life Stress and Problems in Psychosocial Adjustment

Nightmares are common in adults. Many people with nightmares, even those with frequent nightmares, are as well adjusted as individuals without nightmares. However, quite often (although by no means always) the subset of individuals who seek help for their nightmares also have other problems in their waking life. These problems may be exacerbating their nightmares, and at the very least will increase their sensitivity and lower their tolerance to unpleasant dream experience. With such individuals I fairly often choose the nightmares as the first thing to tackle as it is something we can usually have quick success with, which is tremendously empowering to them. It occasionally happens that by reducing their distress with nightmares (either by changing their reactions to the nightmare or by reducing nightmare frequency) the individual feels so much more capable of changing or coping with their other problems that therapy is no longer necessary. In other cases therapy has to address the entire presentation of problems and sometimes the waking issues must take precedence over the dream problems.
My general bias in working with individuals presenting with both waking and dreaming problems is that troubled people tend to be very preoccupied in a non-productive way, and I am therefore hesitant to use techniques which encourage a deepening of that preoccupation (one obvious exception would be when treating repressed trauma); therefore, generally I avoid most dream work, even interpretation (and I include the induction of lucid dreaming as dream work), with any person who lacks a firm “grounding” in the world.

Conclusion

When dealing with individuals who are troubled by their nightmares I use a wide range of techniques depending on the type of nightmare, the reason(s) for the distress, the personality of the individual and their current circumstances and psychosocial adjustment. However, as is now apparent, development of lucidity and/or dream control is noticeably absent from my therapeutic armamentarium sometimes because it simply does not address the problem and other times because there are more efficient, and perhaps safer, ways of dealing with the distress.
Nonetheless I think the development of lucidity or dream control is valuable in work with nightmares (or dreams more generally) with individuals who wish to pursue self-growth and who are able to live with some subjective distress in the process. As mentioned above I regularly use dream control to interact more productively with disturbing dream characters or to work through and change unpleasant dream sequences. Furthermore I have encouraged certain individuals with nightmares to develop similar practices. For example, with some clients, after they have mastered their distress associated with nightmares, we have gone on to do active dream work. Ultimately I view dream work as a set of techniques ideally suited for self-exploration and development, but not necessarily useful for establishing equilibrium in distressed individuals.

##### VI.A.5 The Phenomenological Use of Dreams In Psychotherapy

P. ERIK CRAIG

Center for Existential Studies and Human Services, Worcester and Cambridge, Massachusetts

This paper focuses on the application of phenomenological perspectives, principles and methods for the use of dreams in the psychotherapeutic situation.
Upholding the appeal of the European philosopher and “founder” of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl,”to return to the things themselves,” existentially oriented psychotherapists (e.g., Binswanger, 1963; Boss, 1958; 1963; 1977; Craig 1987a; 1987b; 1988; Stern, 1972) seek to illuminate the meaningfulness of dreams by inviting patients to explicate in detail the concrete episodes of their manifest dreamt existence. As the two partners of inquiry, the therapist and the patient, continue open-mindedly to observe the specific events and elements of a particular manifest dream, the once obscure meaningful forms and structures of that dreamt existence gradually reveal themselves directly. Such an “unambitious reading” of what dreams themselves disclose does not require symbolic interpretations which rely more on the authority of the clinician’s theory than on the authorship of the dreamer him- or herself. Indeed, for phenomenologically oriented clinicians theoretical-symbolic interpretations are in general highly suspect with reference to their existential validity for the patient.
But, it may be asked, what is it that is seen with this kind of unpretentious, phenomenologically discriminating observation? The answer is simply those possibilities of existence, of being-there-in-one’s-world, to which the dreamer was him- or herself open while dreaming.
The critical and clinically significant point with this perspective is that, while dreaming, individuals tend to be more open to certain of their own existential possibilities than they are while they are awake. Thoughtful observation of dreams usually reveals that, during dreaming, individuals seem to select certain, typically fairly limited, domains or topics in their lives and then examine these relatively defined areas under microscopic light. Although the sequestered domains under consideration often appear magnified in such bold, vivid relief that the original concerns are barely recognizable, the intensive microscopic seeing of the dreaming eye offers a paradoxically wider and richer vision of things than is usually possible in waking when an individual cannot afford the luxury of such close-up laboratory-like investigation.
The first challenge for the clinician is therefore simply to discern the particular meaningfulness of the individual’s dreaming existence precisely as it was given to the dreamer. The second challenge is to identify those features of this dreamt existence that announce the dreamer’s own existential constraint as well as his or her heretofore unclaimed possibility. Psychotherapeutic readings of the dream therefore trace the ever changing borders between freedom and constriction in the existence of the dreamer,pointing always to both sides of the existential frontier: retrospectively to the ways in which the individual has lost touch with his or her own inheritance as a human being and prospectively to ways in which he or she might still lay claim to a more fully realized authentic existence of his or her own.

References

Binswanger, L. (1963). Being-in-the-world. New York: Basic Books. Boss, M. (1958). The analysis of dreams New York: Philosophical Library. Boss, M. (1963). Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis. New York: Basic Books. Boss, M. (1977). I dreamt last night . . . New York: Gardner Press.

Craig, E. (1987a). Dreaming, reality and illusion: An existential- phenomenological inquiry. In F. van Zuuren, F. Wertz and B. Mook, Advances in qualitative psychology: Themes and variations (pp. 115–136). Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger; Berwyn, PA: Swets North America.

Craig, E. (1987b). The realness of dreams. In R. Russo, Dreams are wiser then men (pp. 34–57). Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Craig, E. (1988). (Ed.). Psychotherapy for freedom. Special issue of The Humanistic Psychologist, 1(1).

Stern, P. (1972). In praise of madness. New York: W.W. Norton.

##### VI.A.6 Letter to the Editor - The Importance of Lightheartedness

PAUL THOLEY

Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Germany

I would now like to comment briefly on “Proceedings from Lucid Dreaming Symposium” (Lucidity Letter, June 1986) I come to an important statement by Bouchet, that for “those who see life as a movie, a drama or game, something to be played,” the question “Am I dreaming or not?” is not a problem. “It seems that one of the characteristics of the psychological field is a kind of serenity in the face of the diversity of life” (p. 218). I agree with this notion and would so formulate the idea: “a composed and lighthearted attitude towards reality and one’s own self is conducive to the learning of lucid dreaming.” Such an attitude is also an important condition for the solution of problems we encounter in our lives Allow me to illustrate the argument by means of a crucial experience I myself had. At the beginning of my first semester in psychology (November of 1958) one of our professors asked the following question: “Why is it that we do not see objects in our heads, although physiologists claim that our perception of things is due to brain processes?” We were to give the question some thought and had to deliver a written answer by the end of the semester. Shortly before the appointed time, I was out walking and was thinking about this question. I stopped to take a closer look at a tree. First of all it occurred to me that this tree could not possibly fit inside my head. Immediately afterwards, an enormous head appeared in my imagination which encompassed the entire perceptual world, including my perceptual body. I then also realized that my own body was represented in my brain through sensory processes. After this it was no longer a problem for me that perceptual objects are outside the perceptual body, in the same way that physical objects are outside the physical body Once I had grasped the fact that the world we see is simply a phenomenal (mental) world, I developed a completely new attitude to it. For the first time, the idea occurred to me of comparing the experienced real world with the dream world
As I was able to acquire a different attitude toward reality through the sketched epistemological model, I have tried in all my lectures on lucid dreaming to convey the model to my students I believe that my combined [induction] technique has been successful with my students because:

1. I have tried to convey to them—in the manner described—a lighthearted attitude towards reality;

2. My lectures on lucid dreaming were not compulsory, so that only motivated students attended them; and

3. In telling of their lucid dreams, the students were able to motivate each other.

In our book (Tholey, P. & Utecht, K. (1987). Schöpferisch Träumen: der Klartraum als Lebenshilfe Niedernhausen: Falken-Verlag) we have also attempted to convey to the readers a lighthearted attitude towards reality, so that lucid dreaming may be learned without anxiety. Naturally, our techniques should be varied according to the persons involved.
Since in our opinion, many mental disorders stem from an egocenteredness which limits our perception, our thoughts, our emotions, our motivation and our behavior, being able to convey to someone a flexible and lighthearted attitude to the world and one’s own person can be regarded as an important therapeutic step. When the person then uses an induction technique, which can be varied according to the nature of the disorder, a further therapeutic effect is usually observed before the patient has his/her first lucid dream. Once the patient has mastered the art of lucid dreaming and behaves in the appropriate manner during dreaming, then an important step toward self-healing has been made. Lucid dreaming should finally lead to “creative freedom” as it is referred to in Gestalt psychology (psychologie de la forme). I believe that there is an interdependence between the ability to have lucid dreams and “creative freedom”—in the sense of a positive feedback. In other words, a person in possession of a certain amount of creative freedom, will have less difficulty learning lucid dreaming and someone who has mastered the technique of lucid dreaming and behaves appropriately during lucid dreaming will be able to attain greater creative freedom

##### VI.A.7 Clinical and Transpersonal Concerns With Lucid Dreaming Voiced

JAYNE GACKENBACH

Athabasca University and University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Because the phenomenon of dream lucidity has become a field of inquiry for scientists, clinicians, philosophers, and dreamers, I would like to highlight a few concerns which have been mounting in my mind with regard to widespread access to lucid dreaming. We so often experience the lucid dream as pleasant and so seldom hear about “bad” experiences. Therefore it is easy for those interested in dream lucidity to gloss over potential problems. During my sabbatical year from the University of Northern Iowa, I have had the opportunity to talk to many people both in the United States and abroad about lucidity. Although there is much excitement about its potential, those who voice concern about its abuse are also being heard. This excitement is normal and often accompanies the “discovery” (in this case rediscovery) of any new state of consciousness. However, it is incumbent on the leaders of this emerging field to also voice concerns. My concerns with this field include clinical or personal experiential applications of working with parts of the self in the dream, as well as issues regarding the transpersonal nature of the experience.

Clinical/Experiential Concerns

It seems to me that clinical and experiential concerns center around issues of dream control, dream interactions and questions of the fabric of reality. (Several articles and letters address these concerns, [especially in the December, 1987 issue] of Lucidity Letter. Should one have control over one’s dreams? Some would say no, that you should leave the content of the unconscious untouched as it appears in the dream. Most, however, agree that some control of the content could be beneficial (full control is probably impossible). Dream control is clearly tied to expectations but we may not always be conscious of the nature of our expectations, either while awake or while asleep [Editor’s Note: See the panel discussion,”Should You Control Your Dreams?” in the December, 1990 issue of Lucidity Letter for a lively discussion of this particular issue].
I would particularly bring to the attention of the reader the work of Paul Tholey for advice as to the nature of applications of dream control in both clinical and normal populations. In the fall, I was fortunate to meet and visit with Paul in Germany where he continually stressed that in their research/clinical program they have found that the dream provides its own safety mechanisms. That is, he claims that the dreamer will only experience and change the lucid dream to the degree that he/she is able to cope with the outcomes. The reason I point so strongly to Tholey’s work is that our clinical/experiential work in the United States lags far behind his even though we have provided the major psychophysiological and psychological research foundation for dream lucidity. Unfortunately, much of his work was still in German but an English summary of the clinical/experiential applications of lucidity can be found in Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain: Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming (Gackenbach and LaBerge, editors; Plenum, June, 1988). [Editor’s Note: After this was written, Lucidity Letter also published more on Tholey’s work; see the three extended articles reprinted in this commemorative issue, Volume 10(1&2).]
A second concern about working with lucid dreams is the extent and quality of interactions with dream characters/situations. Tholey specifically addresses this concern in the chapter referenced above. Further, during my visit he pointed out that the question “Who am I?” should be posed to other dream characters/situations while lucid. This notion of a receptive attitude to the dream experience rather than an aggressive manipulative one has also been pointed to by clinicians in the United States.
Are lucid dream interactions relevant to waking state behaviors? This question of the transfer of information from lucid dreaming to waking life is crucial to the potential applications of the state. Tholey’s work clearly shows that such transfer is not only possible but desirable. Relatedly, I would caution against taking an attitude toward the lucid dream state of it being unrelated to waking life. This could result in undue absorption in lucid dreaming, leading potentially to addiction (see the letter by Barroso in [the December, 1987] issue of Lucidity Letter for an excellent example).
Another clinical/experiential danger is that extensive exposure to dream lucidity might, in some individuals, lead to questions of the nature of reality both while sleeping and while awake (see the [June, 1987] issue of Lucidity Letter for an excellent example). The question “What is real?” has always intrigued philosophers and appeals to the philosopher in us all. But such questioning either as induction of lucid dreams and/or as a result of extensive, premature exposure to lucidity may in some people lead to quasi-psychotic splits with reality. This is illustrated by Bruce Marcot’s comment about his lucid dream experiment: “. . . I was beginning to become confused as to various states of mind (sleep, awake, dream-conscious). I dropped the experimentation shortly thereafter” (p. 72) [Editor’s Note: June, 1987 issue. See also the reprint in the 1991 issue].
Norbert Sattler, a German psychologist in private practice in Frankfurt, acknowledges that he screens all his patients for reality-testing problems and if they seem to have such problems he does not introduce the concept of dream lucidity. To his remaining patients he introduces dream lucidity and with about one-third of them, he works with lucidity as the therapy technique of choice. However, for persons simply picking up a popular book, reading the April [1987] OMNI article or hearing about lucid dreaming from a neighbor, such screening does not occur. Dare we so whole-heartedly recommend lucid dream induction practices which require reality testing?
However, is it the moral responsibility of the leaders of the field to withhold information because of potential misuse and/or misunderstanding by a few? Perhaps not, but it is their responsibility to caution their audiences for the benefit of those for whom such advice may cause a slower unfolding of lucidity in dreams. The MacTiernan letter in the [December, 1987] Letters to the Editor section is a case in point. His experience was based on reading an article in OMNI by Steve LaBerge and myself. Are we at fault for what happened to him? Clearly no. But we are at fault if we do not routinely caution audiences about abuse or even dangers in accessing an incredibly powerful state of mind.
After hearing about Tholey’s training of an Olympic athlete with dream lucidity, a colleague spontaneously remarked, “Dream lucidity is really the ultimate drug!” Yes, the state has that potential. But so too comes the potentiality of abuse through ignorance of proper use and possibly addiction.

Transpersonal Concerns

I have found in my reading, research, and personal experience with dream lucidity that it is indeed fertile ground for truly transpersonal glimpses into the nature of being. However, I have become aware that there are different approaches to the transpersonal experience of consciousness during sleep. Thishappened initially in my work with colleagues at the Maharishi International University and later as I talked to others more widely about the transpersonal aspect of lucidity. And I began to be confused . . . in fact, I am still confused!
It seemed to me on the surface that the central question here, too, was with dream control. It became clear on closer inspection that the attitude towards the dream is the key question. Should one engage in an active, involved attitude of dream consciousness or should one engage in a passive, uninvolved attitude while conscious that one is dreaming? A third option might be that one could use either attitude inter-changeably as the demands of the state require.
What does all of this have to do with transcending ordinary consciousness, albeit dream consciousness? This question centers around the relationship of dream lucidity (active attitude) to dream witnessing (passive attitude). Essentially, dream witnessing is claimed to represent a fourth state of consciousness which is “higher” than waking, sleeping, and dreaming. One is said to have “transcended” these ordinary states of consciousness (see especially talks by Harry Hunt and Charles Alexander and a research report by Gackenbach, Moorecroft, Alexander, and LaBerge about these questions in [the December, 1987] issue of Lucidity Letter). So what is the concern?
Two concerns have struck me thus far in my thinking about the transpersonal aspects of lucidity. First, if one finds a natural passive “consciousness” during their dream and then hears that they can manipulate their dreams, should they? Or if one naturally tries to manipulate the dream should they force a passive attitude? It seems to me that we should honor what comes naturally to each individual and not try to force unfamiliar styles on each other during dreaming any more than we should during waking.
Of even more concern to me is the possibility of pursuing the “spiritual highest” while lucid as a sole end. If this occurs to the exclusion of all other dream activities, might we not miss the value of lucidity for helping us work out our daily problems? Might not such “spiritual egocenteredness” serve as another form of denial of waking problems?

What is the Proper Attitude/Behavior?

How do we find out what is the proper attitude/behaviors to engage in while lucid in sleep? We go SLOWLY. We ask other lucid dreamers what works for them, we consult other colleagues, whether scientist, clinician or philosopher, and we consider models from both ancient literature as well as from contemporary clinical practice. An excellent example of a blend of these approaches is Ken Kelzer’s recent book, The Sun and the Shadow. By combining the spiritual and the clinical, the mundane and the sublime Kelzer offers a tour de force of the proper attitude we should have in working with both our lucid and our nonlucid dreams.
I don’t think any of us can stop the increasing interest in and experimentation with the state of dream lucidity. But what we can do as pioneers in the area is to advise caution when we hear of someone who has discovered their lucid dreams. Bad examples do exist. Read the first two letters to the editor in [the December, 1987] issue of Lucidity Letter as well as the panel discussion on ethical issues in the symposium proceedings in order to arm yourself with specific illustrations.
Finally, write to Lucidity Letter about your own experiences with dream lucidity, BOTH GOOD AND BAD. We can all benefit from each other’s accounts. Only if we share our experiences, thoughts, reflections, research results, clinical insights, and philosophies can we all learn about this exciting “new” state of consciousness.

##### VI.A.8 Response to Gackenbach

STEPHEN LABERGE

Stanford University, California

Jayne Gackenbach reports that in conversations with many people in the United States and abroad she has heard voices expressing concern about the potential for “abuse” of lucid dreaming (1987). Gackenbach feels that “it is incumbent upon the leaders of this emerging field to also voice concerns” (p. 4) and claims that “we are at fault if we do not routinely caution audiences about abuse or even dangers in accessing an incredibly powerful state of mind” (p. 6). While I share some of my colleague’s concerns, if not apprehensions, I believe it is premature and inappropriate to “routinely caution audiences” about supposed “dangers” that have not yet been convincingly demonstrated. I do not really believe that there is cause for alarm. I have already discussed my own concerns regarding the proper use of lucid dreaming in my 1985 book, to which I direct readers interested in my views. Here I will limit myself to a few comments on the issues addressed by Gackenbach.
Gackenbach asks, “Should one have control over one’s dreams?” An important question, but this formulation seems to me too broad to be useful, as can be seen by parallel questions such as “Should one have control over one’s thoughts? actions? life?” I believe the more useful questions regarding dream control are first, “How much is possible?” and second, “What kind is desirable?” Before answering either question, of course, we need to ask, “For whom?” For people interested in using lucid dreams for personal growth I have recommended control of the dream ego rather than dream content control (LaBerge, 1985). The reason for this is that what we learn when we learn to control our responses to dream characters and other content “applies to our waking lives as well—thus we dream in order to learn how to live better both by day and by night” (p. 106).
Gackenbach quotes with apparent approval the statement that “dream lucidity is really the ultimate drug!” and warns of the concomitant abuse and addiction potential. “Really?” Is lucid dreaming a drug? and if so, what kind? antibiotic? narcotic? psychotomimetic? Assuming that narcotic is the metaphor intended, is there any reason to believe that lucid dreaming is more “addictive” than any other pleasant experience including sleep, nonlucid dreaming, or sex? If all that is being claimed is that people enjoy lucid dreaming, and like any other pleasurable experiences, will want to experience them again, do they really have to be warned about this?
As for the issue of whether “reality testing” is dangerous for some, I have two comments. First, the proper question for inducing lucid dreams is not “What is real?” but rather, “Is this a dream?” or “Am I dreaming or not?” (see Tholey, 1983, and techniques summarized in LaBerge, 1985). Practice with this questioning should lead people to an enhanced understanding of the difference between dreaming and perception, not a confusion of the two. The formulation, “What is real?” on the other hand, seems to lead people to the kind of problems reported by MacTiernan (1987). While on the topic of the MacTiernan letter, Gackenbach seems to regard this as an example of the dangers of lucid dreams. What exactly is the danger? Yes, MacTiernan experienced extreme panic in his dream, but it sounds to me that by that point his lucidity had failed, otherwise the apparent realism of his surrounding would not have caused him toquestion whether or not he was still dreaming. “Dreams are more readily distinguishable from waking perceptions on the basis of their instability rather than their vividness” (LaBerge, 1985, p. 112). In any case, MacTiernan states that after he woke up, “I felt a new outlook on my life. I felt more good to be alive than I ever did before.”
The other comment I would like to make on the question of whether “reality testing” and lucid dreaming in general is dangerous for some is that, as the proverb puts it, “nothing is without danger for the foolish.” This is probably even more true of the mentally unstable, but to put things in proper perspective, we have to ask whether lucid dreams are more dangerous than nonlucid dreams, out-of-body experiences, horror movies, and everyday social life. My impression is that anyone who is likely to get into trouble with lucid dreaming is just as likely to get into trouble with almost anything else. As Idries Shah has observed, “People are always being driven off their heads by something or other, however respectable the creed, and nobody has yet found any method of preventing this” (1978, p. 263).
I would like to make one final comment on the issue of the “ethical” use of lucid dreaming.
Gackenbach ends her essay with the question, “How do we find out what is the proper attitude/behaviors to engage in while lucid in sleep?” The answer she proposes is that “we ask other lucid dreamers what works for them, we consult other colleagues . . . and we consider models from both ancient literature as well as from contemporary clinical practice.” Gackenbach promotes Kelzer’s book as an excellent example of what she thinks is “the proper attitude we should have in working with both our lucid and nonlucid dreams.” I cannot say that I agree with her assessment, but I have a different point to make here. Gackenbach’s principle for determining the right thing to do seems to be social proof: “Look around and see what your neighbors are doing.” While there is nothing wrong with observing what others are doing, I have proposed (LaBerge, 1985) that dreamers listen to their own consciences in determining which courses of action to follow in their own lucid dreams. Dreams are, after all, private, not public experiences.

References

Gackenbach, J. (1987). Clinical and transpersonal concerns with lucid dreaming voiced. Lucidity Letter, 6(2), 4–7.

LaBerge, S. (1985). Lucid dreaming. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher. MacTiernan, V. (1987). Letter to the editor. Lucidity Letter, 6(2), 157–160. Shah, I. (1978). Learning how to learn. New York: Harper & Row.

Tholey, P. (1983). Techniques for inducing and manipulating lucid dreams. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 57, 79–90.

##### VI.A.9 Letter From Scott Sparrow - On the Advisability of Widespread Lucid Dream Induction

G. SCOTT SPARROW

Virginia Beach, Virginia

[Editor’s Note: Scott Sparrow is the author of one of the classic books on lucid dreaming, Lucid Dreaming: Dawning of the Clear Light.]

I agree that it’s time we tackled the question of the advisability of promoting widespread lucid dream induction. It’s somewhat surprising that a more heated debate hasn’t sprung up before now. But now that lucid dreaming has been established as a legitimate focus of research enquiry, and has been found to be available to a large percentage of the populace, it’s certainly time to ask, “What is the appropriate context in which to encourage lucid dream induction?” With regard to this question, I’m going to share some ideas without going back to arrange them. I know if I try to do that, I’ll never find the time to finish a letter to you. So please forgive the disjointed nature of this response.
One reason I haven’t participated much in the lucid dreaming field over the last few years is that I ran into some unpleasant experiences in the late 70’s following a period of almost nightly lucid dreaming. I didn’t want to assume that it was lucid dreaming per se that was acting as a catalyst for these experiences—maybe it was unique to my situation that my pursuit of lucidity had inadvertently thrown me off balance. In any case, I found I had to back off from the pursuit of lucid dreaming until several years later, when I again resumed a more concerted and less ambitious meditation and dreamwork regimen. I realize now that this strange time was a period of growth; but there were times I was quite anxious about what was going on. Fortunately, the whole ordeal left me feeling grounded and seasoned. In fact, it seems to have contributed to my ability to empathize with others who are passing through destabilizing, albeit developmental, periods.
From my reading of the Tibetan literature, which is the only sophisticated historical source I’m aware of on lucid dreaming, there is every reason to assume that lucid dreaming (yoga of the dream state) is a dangerous pursuit, especially when the seeker does not practice meditation. “The expounders of Tibetan yoga emphasize that the Path of Form [the six yogas, including dream yoga] . . . can be dangerous and is more difficult than its companion Path Without Form, the Mahamudra [meditation]” (Evans-Wentz, 1958, p. xxxv). Further, aspirants without a guide are encouraged to pursue the meditation path, rather than the path of the six yogas. One reason for their concern was apparently due to the powerful energy (kundalini) which was activated through the six yogas (and through Mahamudra to a lesser extent), which has to be managed very carefully if it is to promote development, rather than mental illness.
The Tantric principle of the equivalence of consciousness and energy (prana) is central to the Tibetan system. It implies that when we manage to increase one, the other is sure to follow. My own observation that the kundalini (experienced as powerful electricity-like energy coursing through my body) often awakens during my lucid dreams supports this Tantric principle at least at a subjective level. Gopi Krishna’s autobiographical account of his difficulties with the kundalini provides ample reason to approach with great care any consciousness-enhancing technique that arouses this psychophysical force (Krishna, 1971).
Even if we choose to ignore the Tantric wisdom because it presumably bears no relevance to our Western tradition (a highly questionable assumption, considering the universality of various transpersonal experiences), we would still have a hard time justifying our ignorance of the time-tested tenets of psychodynamic theory. Even Wilber, who has gone out on a limb in describing an evolutionary framework leading to oneness with God, places great emphasis on the pre-personal stages of development, and the consequences of repressing the typon (the body-self) and the shadow (Wilber, 1979). Freud’s contributions actually survive quite well in Wilber’s more comprehensive system.
Although I don’t think we should try to prevent healthy individuals from discovering their repressed complexes and other pre-personal issues through lucid dreaming (after all, what is therapy if it isn’t, in part, awakening to these issues), I strongly believe that we need to inform and prepare individuals for the possible ordeal of meeting autonomous repressed aspects of the unconscious through the widened aperture of the lucid dreamer’s awareness.
I believe there is no sure way to obtain informed consent from a prospective lucid dream induction subject. Moreover, I believe the desire for lucidity is, to some undetermined extent, insincere. Why? To the extent that one has continued to repress the awareness of unresolved, possibly painful pre-personal memories and issues (and that probably fits most of us to varying extents), the statement “I want to become lucid,” implies a paradox. It seems to say: I am willing to become aware of what I’ve been unwilling to become aware of. How can we know ahead of time what we will suddenly perceive through our wide-open dream eyes? How can we know if we’re ready for it?
It is possible that lucidity alone confers the strength needed to deal with the enhanced awareness of heretofore repressed aspects. Maybe lucidity is another name for the readiness to deal with the unknown. One friend of mine suggested that lucidity arises to the degree that one is willing to tolerate inconsistency in one’s life. If this is true, then we need not fear the lucid state. But when I look at the lucid dreams of my clients, as well as many of my own, I have observed that lucid dreams are, on occasion, quite overwhelming.
A client of mine reported that she had to take a day off from work two weeks ago after having a lucid dream. True, it was “wonderful” from my standpoint, but it shook her to the foundations of her self concept. In short, she found an old flattened doll beneath a pile of rubbish, picked it up and prelucidly thought, “If I was this doll, I know what I’d like.” She began hugging and stroking the doll, and it came to life! As it dawned on her that she was dreaming, she nonetheless felt deeply disturbed to realize that this “doll” was indeed alive in some sense. One can appreciate the significance of her finding out that her abused child (very abused) was still alive, but it was a fact that went against her ego definition. Wonderful facts can be devastating from the standpoint of a well-fortified ego. Knowing this woman, I feel that she was fortunate to be in therapy when such “good” news became conscious to her.
Perhaps not all of us possess repressed pre-personal issues; does that make the lucid dream a comfortable experience? Not necessarily. Even transpersonal reality can be quite disturbing to the ego (e.g. Tart’s research on the fear of psi). Once again, Wilber is a help here. If it’s pre-personal material, it can be disturbing to the extent that the ego will not include it inside its boundaries. If it’s transpersonal material, it’s disturbing as long as the ego does not wish to be included in a larger whole. To the ego, these fears feel quite similar!
While the example of my client’s dream represents one way that lucidity might leverage an uninformed person (and who isn’t, ultimately?) into disturbing, albeit valuable, realizations, I have a more serious reservation concerning the indiscriminate promotion of lucid dream induction. Quite simply, I feel that it is easy for persons to experience the freedom and power it bestows without having to develop a commensurate willingness to surrender old ways. One can easily escape from or destroy a dream figure. Such actions, while far from the endpoint of our growth, often fit into a developmental continuum as intermediate accomplishments (Rossi, 1972). As the therapist, I serve as one who encourages the dreamer not to get stuck in such intermediate stages, and to continue working toward dialogue, reconciliation and integration. I’m concerned that many individuals, who do not have someone to urge them onward, may get caught up in the power of the lucid dream, and provoke the “retaliation” of largely autonomous, repressed unconscious content.
Wilber might say that lucid dreaming can easily become an Atman project because of its Eros-potential—its promise as a cornucopia of personally gratifying experiences. As long as we promote lucid dreaming as a blank check for personally gratifying experiences, I believe we hide a greater truth from a person’s view—that lucid dreaming is inescapably a form of yoga which demands the most of us, including eventual surrender of power and self-gratification urges. As researchers, do we wish to promote a scintillating but potentially dangerous half-truth, or a less attractive but more complete view?
In my own life, I found that at the height of my lucid dreaming I ran into a brick wall of sorts. Lucid dreaming had become evidence of my evolution, a merit badge of sorts. Of course, I thought I was handling it okay; but I had no idea what I was repressing. Who does? Well, all kinds of very angry people began showing up in my dreams, and turning rather demonic to boot. A black panther walked in the front door and would not go away no matter how much I told him he was only a dream.
Maybe it’s inevitable that we all embark on the Path encumbered by adolescent dreams. Maybe we need to fly, then crash, then pick up and pursue the Path with more sobriety. There’s a lot of evidence to support the notion that a “dark night” is an unavoidable course correction in our path to wholeness (Underhill, 1911/1961), or that at least it’s hard to avoid failure in our early efforts at transpersonal evolution. (e.g. Robert Johnson’s analysis of Percival’s quest in He). If so, we need to normalize a broader range of experiences so that individuals will not conclude erroneously that they are failing just because they are in pain. How I wish there had been someone around me in late 1977 who could have known enough to say, “This is part of it. Pick yourself up, and you’ll make it through okay?” It would have made the path a lot more meaningful (if not easier to tolerate).
Herb Puryear has said that the only thing more dangerous than meditating is not meditating. I believe the same is true of lucid dreaming, psychotherapy and other fertile approaches to growth and transformation. I’m not going to stop pursuing it, and I don’t expect others to. Even so, I feel we have an obligation to let others know that lucid dreaming can usher them into the darkness as much as into the Light. And both are necessary experiences, I believe.

I hope these ideas can be helpful in the ongoing dialogue regarding the cost vs. benefits analysis of lucid dream induction.

— Scott Sparrow

References

Evans-Wentz, W.Y. (1958). Tibetan yoga and secret doctrines. New York: Oxford University Press.

Krishna, G. (1971). Kundalini: Evolutionary energy in man. Berkeley: Shambhala.

Rossi, E. (1972). Dreams and the growth of personality: Expanding awareness in psychotherapy. New York: Braunner/Mazel.

Underhill, E. (1911/1961). Mysticism. New York: E.P. Dutton.

Wilber, K. (1979). No boundary: Eastern and Western approaches to personal growth. Boston & London: New Science Library/Shambhala.

##### VI.A.10 Ethical Issues for Applications of Lucid Dreaming: An Introduction

JOSEPH R. DANE

Editor’s Note: We present here Joe Dane’s cogent introductory remarks for the panel discussion on ethical issues in the 1987 meeting of the Lucidity Association. It is interesting that, in voicing his concerns about the possibility of disruptive effects of lucidity induction, he also cites an example of a clinically significant reaction from his experience with hypnosis. It might be illuminating to investigate and compare disruptive experiences from a variety of imaging disciplines, including nonlucid dreamwork

I’d like to start out by acknowledging a couple of things. One is to thank Stephen [LaBerge] and Jayne [Gackenbach] for allowing me to participate in this. I feel a little bit like an interloper. It’s been a number of years since my original work, back in 1980, with lucid dream induction on nonlucid dreamers, using hypnosis, personal symbols and waking suggestion. Since that time I’ve shifted over to a medical setting using hypnosis with medical conditions. Nonetheless, I was originally trained as a psychotherapist and, in that context, given that that’s still my main identification, I’m delighted to have the opportunity to participate in this. I should indicate, by the way, that since I’m out of the lucid dream and dream research areas, there may well be current developments or attitudes of which I am not aware. I have to acknowledge that right away and apologize right in the beginning, just in case. Again, thank you.

The two general areas that seem to me a good place to start are:

1. Dream control

2. Is or is not lucid dreaming “dangerous?”

I’d like to do is go ahead and begin with a couple of general observations on those two topics. The first observation is a matter of curiosity and the second will be a bit of a clinical caution.

Dream Control and Media Hype

First, I’m curious as to whether or not it’s really just the popular press that’s pushing for the idea of what sounds like total dream control. I wonder about this because I have yet to talk directly with anyone who clearly believes that total whole-sale control of dreams by waking consciousness is a desirable goal. I’d welcome being corrected on this, but I would like to ask now just for a show of hands, and this is with all due respect. Is there anyone here who believes that total waking control of dreams is the way to go? [Discussion clarifies that no one does.]
Well, we’ll probably end up in the same place then from what I’m hearing. My concern arises fromseeing lots of “dream control” in the popular press. That is what gets touted. As a matter of fact, Stephen, I saw your audio tape entitled “Dream Control.” There is a problem with the position of “total dream control,” which seems to suggest that dreams have nothing positive to offer in their uncontrolled state. I’m not sure that’s the implication but it would seem to be that to me.
My suspicion is that the seeming differences in opinion about dream control are really based in lack of clarity, or at least specificity, in what we mean by control. Given our presumably mutual enthusiasm for dreams here, I suspect that we really all basically agree that in some cases, yes, conscious control of the dream content is highly desirable. At the same time, however, the dream may have a corrective agenda, or a message of its own which needs to be respected, which I think gets back to the point of balance, or mutual control.
If we do basically agree on these points, and I again welcome being corrected, then it just may be that the goal of wholesale conscious control of dreams is more a product of media hype than considered clinical opinion. If that’s so, I wonder if we don’t have an ethical obligation to actively oppose such “misverbage” in the press about the desirability of dream control, or rather, total dream control. I wonder if the ethical imperative isn’t to clarify that we’re talking more about conscious control in dreams, not necessarily conscious control of dreams. Not to clarify this seems logically inconsistent with our touted respect for dreams. It’s also contributes by omission to the very dismissal of dreams that we all claim to oppose.
At the same time, the realities of dealing with editors and Madison Avenue types may make such clarification difficult, if not impossible. I would be interested to hear of any accounts of that kind of problem in dealing with this literature.

Potentially Disruptive Inductions

My second general observation is a clinical caution and a concern having to do with lucid dream training. This may be specific to my own experience, so I’d be interested to hear from others on this topic. My own experience is that such training can be psychologically challenging or even disruptive to some individuals who otherwise seem well adjusted. This may be due to the use of hypnosis in my study, and/or the use of personal symbols. In any event, the experience was clearly disruptive for some of the subjects despite my having screened out subjects for psychological vulnerability. I am disturbed to consider what the outcome for these individuals would have been if there had not been adequate follow-up of their experience during and shortly after the study.
I am aware that my comments may be dismissed by some as alarmist and even proprietary—as if I am promoting the old “only the experts can deal with dreams” argument. I do not mean that. I simply find that my own experience suggests that it’s useful to ask questions like:
“Is lucid dream induction ever dangerous?”
“Are there psychologically vulnerable individuals in whom lucid dream induction might be disruptive or inadvisable?”
“If so, when? to whom?”
“How does one know ahead of time?”
These are types of questions which all workshop leaders probably face with any sort of psychologicallyoriented material. But they seem especially pertinent with respect to lucid dreaming where rigid boundaries between waking and dream consciousness literally seem to no longer exist. They are all the more relevant if one adds the component of hypnosis to the induction procedure. I add this simply because hypnosis was a major component of the induction study that I did.
Again, my biases show. I was recently working in the pain clinic with a radicular sympathetic dystrophy patient for alterations in blood flow. During our second hypnosis session, she said “Gee! I know why I’m so good at this (i.e. hypnosis). This is what I used to do when my mother beat me!” With that she spontaneously regressed to age three when she was hiding in the closet from her mother. Over the next two or three weeks that person decompensated as she became increasingly overwhelmed by memories of physical abuse by her mother and sexual abuse by her father. She lived several hundred miles away. Fortunately, there was an excellent in-patient setting in her area with an excellent treatment program for sexual abuse, and this person recovered very nicely. She has gradually been able to separate the spontaneous state-dependent recall of the original abuse which was stimulated by the state of hypnosis (I am assuming here that her hypnotic capacity was used as a child to separate herself off from the trauma), and can now use hypnosis for controlling the pain and swelling without eliciting these memories. The point is there was a very significant clinical reaction to that particular state identified as hypnosis.
I’m not sure if “hypnosis” is as much the mediating variable of these types of reactions as it is the person’s expectations for what hypnosis can do (e.g., uncover painful memories and make one reveal them). My concern is that I have had several psychologically untrained people writing to me that they would like to use hypnosis, and that they would like to get transcripts of the hypnotic induction that I was using because they would like to use it with high school students. I think there are some cautions to be had here. While most people never experience difficulties with hypnosis, the hypnotic state can, especially with any sort of age regression, elicit highly unexpected but clinically significant reactions. Those using hypnosis should be equipped to respond appropriately and the hypnosis should be done in a context that provides genuine opportunity and expectation for redress and follow-up in the event of any untoward reaction.

Dreamer Ethics and the Unconscious

Now I would like to shift gears and simply establish some background for our later discussions. It seems useful to remember that ethics, in general, implies a host of variables, all of which may be different for different individuals. Ethical decisions imply consideration of value systems, goals, ends, means, purposes, intent, context, et cetera. In addition ethics involves, typically, a continuum from absolutism to relativism—difference between asking, “Is it good or bad?” versus, “When is it good or bad?” In short, ethics reflects one’s basic philosophical stance and perspective on a host of issues.
With respect to the ethics of dream control, however, the fundamental issue would appear to involve one’s beliefs and attitudes about the so called unconscious. More specifically, does the unconscious exist, and if so, what is its relationship to the conscious ego? If one accepts that the unconscious ego exists, then the next question becomes, “To what degree do I accept the somewhat anthropomorphic formula: waking consciousness = ego consciousness, dream consciousness = the unconscious?” In short, the ethics of dream control can depend heavily on one’s view of the relation between waking and dream consciousness, and this in turn, on one’s view on the so-called unconscious.
My own bias is that something like the unconscious does exist, although I’m more likely to call it the unaware rather that the “unconscious” dimension. My further bias is that the ethics of attempting controlof dreams are the same as those of attempting to “control” the unconscious in waking life. Those who believe the unconscious is basically Freud’s seething snake pit of repressed id might well favor total conscious control. However, others, including myself, believe the unconscious has both positive and negative aspects. It is both a pit of snakes and a source of creative inspiration and vision. From this perspective the goal is to foster the positive and minimize the negative. The question then becomes, what are the ethics of control in this process of fostering the positive and minimizing the negatives.
Further, I wonder if by “control,” don’t we really mean “influence,” “guide,” “teach,” “encourage,” and even “cooperate”? For example, when we look at the history of mankind, conscious control of the unconscious seems laughably impossible, yet we attempt it every day when we “work” on ourselves and our “bad habits.” We say, “I must not let myself do that,” as if some part of us could control, prevent or gain permission for certain behavior. To me the ethics of dream control is precisely the ethics of interaction between these so called parts of the individual.
Another major form of attempting to control the unconscious in daily life is called psychotherapy. It’s precisely here, I believe, that we have a ready made model for ethics concerning dream control. That is the ethics of doing dream control are the same as the ethics for doing psychotherapy. Of course that raises all of the old questions about who knows best, the therapist or the client, about respect for the client versus therapeutic manipulation, and about overt control versus influence and cooperation. All these questions come back to haunt us in the context of ethical lucid dream induction.

Lucidity as Intrapersonal Psychotherapy

I would further like to suggest that lucid dreaming itself can be seen as intra-personal psychotherapy, where waking and dream consciousness constantly shift back and forth between the roles of client and therapist. I would like to suggest that the question, “Which knows best, waking consciousness or dream consciousness,” is more like a Zen koan than a valid question, because the answer is, “both.” The solution to conflict between waking and dream consciousness is resolution and integration, not, “I win, you lose.” So when we talk about the ethics of dream control and lucid dreaming, I believe that we are talking about the ethics of enhancing cooperation between waking and dream consciousness, not about the imposition of one will upon the other. We are talking about the ethics of yoga, if you will, in the sense of beneficially yoking waking and dream consciousness in the service of a common goal. That goal is wholeness.
As a way to expand and flesh out the notions that I’ve been talking about, I would like to suggest that the process of individuation, as described by Jungian psychologists, is perhaps the best model available of what healthy ethical lucid dreaming really is. In discussions between waking and dream ego, James Hall, whom you probably know as a union proponent, states, “The waking ego is like a gate keeper which can permit or deny entrance into the boundaries which he guards, but who is helpless to command the appearance or disappearance of a particular entrant (content), however much he might desire it.” To my understanding of it, this is quite analogous to the type of limits during lucid dreaming on, “control” of dream consciousness by waking consciousness.
Consider, for example, the following account of an attempt to use dream lucidity for complete control over the dream.
Now I realize that I can control the dream sequence. I decide I want the rain to stop. It doesn’t. I wonder to myself why it’s so important that it keep on raining, and what the rain could represent. I come to a platform where there are some people standing around. I go from one to another asking them, “What time does the next train leave?” But they all ignore me. It’s as if I’m not even there. I begin to feel angry and frustrated but I stop myself and think, the next one I speak to won’t be like this.
Well the next character with whom the dreamer speaks not only answers her question but also provokes her to further self-analysis about the true source of her frustration and anger by responding, “Well, that depends on where you want to go.” And with that the dream ends. It’s as if the dream has permitted some sort of alteration or control but simultaneously maintained its own control over the presumed agenda of increasing the dreamer’s self-awareness.
With respect to the process of individuation itself, Hall notes, “Individuation might be described in terms of the complex theory—Jungian complexes, that is—as the gradual reshaping of the ego under the pressure of the self so that it becomes more inclusive, and more comprehensive. In such an individuation process the contents of the ego continually shift, gradually incorporating certain non-ego complexes, such as the shadow. The reworking of the specific contents on which the ego tacitly relies constitutes the point at which the unfolding of the self through the time-bound ego, generates the observable individuation process. The point at which this process can be most clearly observed is in,” Hall says, “dreams.” I would suggest lucid dreams would be an even clearer example, which may be thought of, to again quote Hall, as the “metabolism of the ego.”
As an example of such a metabolic processes within the lucid dream state I’d like to consider, Stephen, your very fine example that appeared in the original in Psychology Today in 1980.
I am in the middle of a riot in the classroom. Everyone is running around in some sort of struggle. Most of them are Third World types and one of them has a hold on me—he is huge with a pockmarked face. I realize that I am dreaming and stop struggling. I look him in the eyes and, while holding his hands, speak to him in a loving way, trusting my intuition to supply the beautiful words of acceptance that flow out of me. The riot has vanished, the dream fades and I awaken feeling wonderfully calm.
Here the nightmare has been controlled by confrontation, resulting in spontaneous resolution. It seems plausible that the reported waking sense of calm was a direct result, or at least reflection, of the dreamer’s internal reconciliation with presumably formerly unacceptable tendencies toward hostility and aggression. Consistent with Jungian concepts about resolution through juxtaposition of seemingly irreconcilable opposites, the dreamer’s lucidity has enabled him to, “metabolize” or transform the dream from one more instance of unconscious projection into a genuine integration of basic impulses.
The unique contribution which dream lucidity adds to this metabolism of the psyche is the degree to which it can facilitate and enhance this process through active conscious cooperation and participation of the waking ego. The basis for this enhanced facilitation is precisely the ability to consciously influence lucid dream content while not being able to control it completely. This atmosphere of enforced autonomy and mutual respect permits an enhanced level of therapeutic encounter between waking and dream consciousness enabling them to achieve a new level of cooperation and integrative negotiation. The ethics of such negotiation, I would contend, are the ethics of dream control.
Just to sum up my argument in simpler words, I think the most desirable and most ethical type of dream control is enhanced control over the dreamer’s response within the dream, and not over the dreamer’s response to the dream. I would like to add one other question that we might want to address here, and that is, if we accept the idea that dreams have an agenda, that they’re corrective or whatever, to what degree does the health of the dream’s agenda depend on the waking psychological health of the dreamer? In other words, to what degree can we trust the dream to guide us and direct us? And doespsychopathology, as classically defined, suggest that some individuals have something so askew that even their self corrective processes are out of line and that, in fact, to induce lucid dreams in those folks would be likely to result in self-defeating phenomena? What are the implications of this anthropomorphic view of the dream’s agenda, and of its own source of self-censure, self-correction?

### Section B: Other Applications

##### VI.B.1 Applications of Lucid Dreaming in Sports

PAUL THOLEY

Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Germany

The following article has above all a practical orientation. The various possibilities for the application of lucid dreaming in sports training are presented and briefly illustrated. These theses are based on findings from experiments with experienced lucid dreamers who were instructed to carry out various routine and sport-related actions while lucid-dreaming, with the object of observing the effects on both dreaming and waking states (Tholey, 1981a). Additionally, I report here on numerous spontaneous accounts of athletes who have mastered lucid dreaming, as well as my own years of experience as a lucid dreamer and as an active competitor in different types of sports.
With regard to theoretical principles I have relied on the gestalt theory of sports as it was first systematically presented by Kohl after numerous phenomenological and objective experiments (Kohl, 1956), and as it was further developed in my own work (Tholey, 1981b). The latter explored the significance of lucid dreaming to sports. Due to space limitations, only the most important theoretical conceptions concerning the application of lucid dreaming to sports training will be discussed here.

Basic Theoretical Principles

Gestalt theory conceives of the complex sensory-motor feedback system of the human physical organism as a servo-mechanism which serves the finely-tuned, energy-saving control of the organism. The main control center of this circuit system lies in the brain. There the physical world is represented more or less exactly as the phenomenal world (phenomenal body ego and phenomenal environment) by means of sensory processes. The control of the organism can be compared to the control of a large airplane in whose cockpit all the relevant data about the airplane and its surroundings are represented by the transfer of computer information.
In a dream, the sensory-motor feedback system is interrupted to such an extent that both intended and immediately experienced body movements do not lead to corresponding movements of the physical organism itself. The situation in a dream is therefore comparable to the one of a pilot in a flight simulator. Just as a flight simulator can be used to learn how to fly a real airplane, dreaming (especially lucid dreaming) can lead to the learning of movements by the physical organism in the real (waking) world. Because of the close connection between sensory and motor processes, we speak of sensory-motor learning. Given that the world is experienced as real in lucid dreaming, I am of the opinion that lucid dream training is more effective than various forms of so-called mental training during which which the athlete performs movements in a world that is perceived as existing only in the imagination (for the physiological argument on this point see Tholey, 1981a).
Having pointed out that various characteristics are common to both the sensory-motor system of the physical organism and the technological simulation systems made for an airplane, I want to indicate some important differences. While the data in the control center of a technological simulation system areusually stored in records and files that are dynamically independent of each other, the phenomenal facts represented in the brain find themselves in a state of dynamic interaction. For this reason I also speak of the phenomenal field (body ego and surrounding field). A person’s movements can be controlled by the phenomenal ego (as with voluntary actions, or by field actions (cf. Lewin, 1936)). The playing field in soccer, for example, can be experienced as an action field formed by force lines having an immediate effect on motor performance—i.e., without intellectual or deliberate effort. This was noted in 1927 by Hartgenbusch. Leaving aside the aforementioned differences, the control of the organism through the surrounding phenomenal field is most comparable to the automatic control of an airplane with the aid of an auto-pilot.
There is an important difference between experiences simulated in lucid dreams and those simulated in waking-life computer-based technological simulators. Through the use of certain manipulation techniques, the experienced lucid dreamer can intentionally call forth experiences which contradict not only the routine, daily experiences of the waking state, but also the physical laws of nature. In this way lucid dreaming offers a broader range of learning possibilities than a technology-based simulator. Furthermore, we have found that improvements in motor-related performance occur from one dream to the next. This is especially pronounced in actions which were not heretofore known in a waking state, for example, various exercises performed in flying or soaring states.

Theses on the Application Possibilities of Lucid Dreaming in Sports

Thesis 1: Sensory-motor skills which have already been mastered in their rough outlines can be refined by using lucid dreaming.
Experiments showed that repeated movements in particular can be substantially improved with the appropriate exercises during lucid dreaming. These include rapid slalom movements on snow skis, skateboards and snowboards. This improvement was imputed to various tendencies towards a good gestalt (pregnance) that can be observed in all living systems in which the individual parts are locked into dynamic interaction with each other. In a lucid dream the individual areas of the phenomenal field interact in a more intensely dynamic way than in a waking state in which the areas of the phenomenal field are more dependent on sensory processes. In addition, body movements which are harmonious with each other and the situation as a whole are more likely to be retained than non-harmonious body movements. Good gestalts are also further distinguished by a particular kind of multisensory sensitivity which is ultimately responsible for the perfection of movements (for details see Tholey, 1986).

Thesis 2: New sensory-motor skills can be learned using lucid dreaming.
To illustrate this point I will first present the case of a competitor in the martial arts (Tholey & Utecht, 1987, p. 208). For years this man had studied the so-called “hard systems” (karate, tae kwon do, and jujitsu). Then he decided to learn the “soft” system of aikido. Over a period of two years, however, he failed to succeed in this because the previously learned movements stubbornly refused to be superseded. He considers the following to be the key experience that put him on the right path:
On this particular evening, after still not succeeding in wearing down my attacker and taking him to the mat, I went to bed somewhat disheartened. While falling asleep the situation ran through my mind time and again. While defending myself, the correct balancing movement collided with my inner impulse to execute a hard defensive block, so that I repeatedly ended up unprotected and standing there like a question mark . . . a ridiculous and unworthy situation for the wearer of a black belt. During a dream that night, I fell down hard one time instead of rolling away. That day I had made up my mind to ask myself the critical question in this situation: “Am I awake or am I dreaming?” I was immediately lucid. Without thinking very long about it, I immediately went to my Dojo, where I began an unsupervised training session on defense techniques with my dream partner. Time and time again I went through the exercise in a loose and effortless way. It went better every time.
The next evening I went to bed full of expectations. I again achieved a lucid state and practiced aikido further. That’s the way it went the whole week until the formal training period started again I amazed my instructor with an almost perfect defense. Even though we speeded up the tempo [of our interchanges], I didn’t make any serious mistakes. From then on I learned quickly and received my own training license in one year.
The following example comes from a snow skier.
Jetting, with its strong shift of the center of gravity backwards, had always made me so afraid that I constantly fell and came home to the cabin covered with bruises. The summer after I learned lucid dreaming, I began to dream about skiing over moguls. I often used the hump to initiate a flying experience, but at some point I also began to lean back shortly before the hump, thereby taking my weight off the skis in order to change direction with my heels. That was a lot of fun and after a few weeks it became clear to me during lucid dreaming that my movements corresponded to jetting. When I went on a skiing vacation again the following winter and took a course, I mastered jetting in one week. I am absolutely convinced that was connected to my night exercises.
This example demonstrates that a lucid dreamer can simulate a world in which the usual physical laws apply, as well as a world in which they are not applicable. Both such simulations are significant for sensory-motor learning.

Thesis 3: Sensory-motor actions can be perfected by test runs carried out in a lucid dream state.
Jean-Claude Killy, winner of several Olympic medals in Alpine skiing, reports that on the evening before a race, in a half-sleeping state, he mentally skis over the slalom course (which he has imprinted in his memory during the day) as many times as are necessary to master the course well enough to ski it without falling. Although this is hypnagogic rehearsal, the technique can be used in lucid dreams.
Sladko Solinski, an internationally successful equestrian, has written me several letters about his lucid dreaming experiences. Here is an excerpt from one of his letters (Personal Communication, 1983):
Thus, in a lucid dream I can form my figures to an extremely exact degree—whether in the sand of dressage competition or across the landscape of a cross-country course during military-style competition. I manage to do this in slow motion, giving the horse “assistance” at exactly the right moment in a particular movement phase. During lucid dreaming “I ride” the course through several times (three to nine times), exactly and completely. Based on this experience, my “body knowledge” is sufficient to get through the course autonomously, i.e.—without conscious or deliberate effort.
We will come back to these important executions in another context. Here it should only be pointed out that when an athlete performs a flowing movement without conscious or deliberate effort, it is often described as instinctive, automatic or unconscious. None of these expressions are quite correct since the movements do not result from inborn instincts, but rather from learning processes. Furthermore, the movements are not to be understood as the movements of an isolated person, but as an event taking place in a field. This event is grasped and controlled as a multi-sensory sensitivity to the present or anticipated total situation.

Thesis 4: The flexibility of an athlete’s reactions can be substantially improved by varying body movements in lucid dreams.
This is especially important for complex types of sports in which the athlete must quickly react to unforeseen situations. For this reason it isn’t wise to execute only the most optimal actions during lucid dreaming, but rather (as in the Killy example) to vary the actions such that they could either lead to a fall or at least come close to it. This is important because athletes who take part in risk-taking sports frequently fall into dangerous, unforeseen situations from which they can save themselves only if they have previously acquired a large measure of reaction flexibility. Additionally, flexibility of action also promotes a finely tuned and disturbance-compensating control of sensory-motor performance.

Thesis 5: Lucid dreaming can also be used for practicing mental movements which make sensory-motor learning easier.
“Mental movements” are understood to be those movements which are experienced as occurring merely in the imagination rather than in physical reality. The effectiveness of mental movements derived from observing or imitating the movements of a practiced athlete has been known for a long time. This is not an appropriate place to describe all of the various types of mental movements which are significant in sports; for more details, see Kohl (1956).
There is one type of mental movement that does seem both important and particularly appropriate to lucid dreaming, and that is “anticipation.” “Anticipation” in this context can have two aspects. It can be an overall plan of action that is determined before the execution of any particular movement or action. It can also be an interactive process: during the execution of a particular movement, the immediately following movement is imagined. The anticipation of the next movement doesn’t occur in a willful or deliberate manner, but is an event which takes place in a total phenomenal field. This aspect of anticipation makes it possible to react “lightning quick” as it is expressed in Zen Buddhism because the athlete is reacting to the anticipated situation, not the present one. Top skiers, for example, are always four or five gates ahead in slalom skiing. For a physiological explanation, see Kohl (1956).
With the help of the test runs described in Thesis 3 (experienced as real during lucid dreaming), an athlete can sketch out a plan of movement for himself before its execution in a waking state. More importantly, due to the repeated execution of the movement in lucid dreaming, during actual execution, a person is prepared to carry out an action while taking into account the coming event.
Two other kinds of mental movements are bound up with various ego experiences. In the first, the athlete feels himself to be playing the roles of both the actor and spectator simultaneously. This means being able to better control the movement from “within” as well as “without.” In the second type of movement, the athlete puts himself in the position of another athlete. This is helpful when another athlete is taken as a model in order to learn from him, purely through observation or by imitating his movements. An example is a skier following behind a better skier.

To my knowledge, examples of the first type (whereby the athlete is both actor and spectator) are only to be found in the realm of lucid dreaming. This is most likely because the ego core can leave the dream body and can be duplicated into an actor as well as a spectator of the lucid dreaming. Sladko Solinski reports that riding becomes especially easy for him (and more fun) when he feels himself to be rider and spectator at the same time. Another experienced lucid dreamer reported to me that he can control his car better while racing when he steers it from inside as well as with an imagined ego observing from a bird’s eye view.
Mentally/imaginally slipping into the body of another person is particularly significant for the martialarts as well as being potentially useful in other sports. It is a way of anticipating the opponent’s intentions and avoiding his ruses. Here again, putting oneself into the “body” of another person can be made significantly easier and intensified during lucid dreaming by the fact that the body of the “other” dream character can be entered by the ego core of the lucid dreamer.

Thesis 6: Lucid dreaming can be used for improving the organization of the phenomenal field with respect to the execution of sports movements.
According to gestalt theory, the learning process involved in complex sports is much less a matter of acquiring a particular form of movement or a repertoire of such forms than it is a matter of improving the organization or structure of the total phenomenal field. A better understanding of this requires an examination of each individual aspect of the organization of the total field, even though the parts are closely connected to each other. 6

6.1 The unit-formation in the phenomenal field. In the course of sensory-motor learning, separate parts of the phenomenal field can grow together with an increasing degree of unity. In this way, the skier “grows together” with his skis, or the tennis player with his racket. The sports equipment acts like an extension of the sensory-motor organs in the practiced athlete. The skier feels the snow and the terrain with his/her skis and willfully and deliberately moves the skis rather than his/her body.
Something similar is also emphasized by Gallwey, who refers to “inner training” (Gallwey, 1981) or the “inner game” (Gallwey, 1974), but my experience is that elements of his theories are ineffective for beginners. For example, Gallwey maintains that skiers should first watch for sensations in their feet in order to achieve a feeling for the snow. According to gestalt theory, this attention to bodily sensations (like the pressure on the soles of the feet or kinesthetic bodily sensations) prevents the perception of the characteristics of the phenomenal objects existing outside of the phenomenal body. When the skier concentrates on the body ego, feeling for the snow and the terrain is lost. For both the beginner and the advanced skier, this can lead to tension. It invites the beginner to experience the tension of fear.
Therefore, in sports where the surrounding field plays a role, the athlete should concentrate on the perception of it from the beginning (for details see Tholey, 1987).
The particular significance of lucid dreaming lies in the greater fluidity (cf. Lewin, 1936) of the phenomenal field available in the dreaming state. It is much easier to unite the phenomenal body and sports equipment into a single whole, or to extend the boundaries of the phenomenal body while lucid in a dream. For example, while lucid dreaming, a sailplane pilot first learned flying techniques which involved flying with only his body. Later he flew with a waking-life sailplane, developing such perfect unity with it that “his wings could feel the winds which are so important to the control of the aircraft.”
More interesting than achieving oneness with sports equipment is the “mutual empathy” achieved between two living beings. To explain this we will quote again from a letter from equestrian Sladko Solinski:
The essential thing for me (to be achieved during lucid dream training) is the looseness of the horse since it alone guarantees a good evaluation from reasonable judges in dressage competition and the safety of the horse in going over the most difficult hurdles in military-style competition It is as if the rider hands over responsibility for success to the horse through mental training (in lucid dreaming) . . . and peculiarly enough, the horses seem to be waiting exactly for this in order to prove what they can do if you just don’t bother them.
In other words, the horse is more important to the movement than the rider, if he is a master in this sport.
In the conclusion to his book, Solinski wrote that a rider who has achieved “perfect mutual empathy with his horse perceives the world through the eyes, ears and nostrils of the horse.” (Solinski, 1983, p.123).
These and similar kinds of experiences sound so fantastic to the layman that they have been considered supernatural (for example, White and Murphy, 1983) but they find a natural explanation in the gestalt theory of sport.

6.2 The organization of reference systems in the phenomenal field. The structuring, differentiation and coordination of psychological reference systems (perceived space and perceived time above all) is also of great significance in sensory-motor learning.
Just how useful lucid dreaming can be in this regard is shown in the above-mentioned example by Solinski, where he points out the phenomenon of slow-motion during riding practice (in a lucid dream state). This slow-motion makes it possible for the “assistance of the rider” to be given “at just the correct moment.” Generally speaking, a differentiation occurs in the temporal reference system’s standard of measurement. The “timing” of movements, which is so important in sports, is thus made easier. The expression “assistance” makes it clear that Solinski focuses on the horse’s flow of movements during the “timing” he speaks of. During lucid dreaming he also occasionally links his exercises to a certain piece of music which acts “almost like a metronome for the horse’s flow of movements.” When he later rides the dressage course during the day, he sometimes lets himself be guided only by the rhythm of the “inner” music. Solinski also points to parallels in other sports where similar behavior can be observed. For instance, in investigations involving top athletes in motocross racing, this slowing of time often occurs spontaneously in service of the racer’s safety (Nurbarkhsch, 1987).
It can be advantageous to manipulate phenomenal space as well as phenomenal time. In an earlier work (Tholey, 1982) we demonstrated the extent to which phenomenal space can change in many respects through the execution of sensory-motor actions. The further significance of lucid dreaming for sports is shown in the rapidity with which movements can be carried out relative to the waking state. A person is able to execute longitudinal and latitudinal turns of the body in quick succession. In our investigation, this was shown to be especially relevant in the waking state in those sports which demanded a finely developed multisensory sensitivity to the situation as well as body balance and movement. This would imply improved coordination of both space and time systems.
Relatedly, there seem to be amazing similarities between lucid dream experiences in a state of phenomenal weightlessness and the experiences reported by astronauts (cf. Furrer, 1987), in a state of physical weightlessness. In both cases, learning processes are necessary to adjust to the new and unusual situation. Furthermore, it is necessary to learn how to distinguish between up and down until it is possible to deliberately vary the spatial system in such a way that what was formerly up is now down and vice-versa. It seems to me that lucid dreaming offers the best alternative for training astronauts in weightlessness (Tholey, 1987). The possibility of altering the time and space system so that it no longer corresponds to daily experiences is also demonstrated by the above-mentioned superiority of lucid dreaming in comparison to technology-based simulators which serve the danger-free exercising of sensory-motor skills (e.g., those required to pilot the airplane).

6.3 The focusing of attention in the phenomenal field. As Kohl was able to show in detail in his investigation of various sports (1956), a clear change of focus takes place as the degree of sophistication with a sport increases. While the beginner directs his attention to the body ego, the expert focuses his attention on all the relevant areas of the “surrounding” phenomenal field, such as the sports equipmentand the terrain. Beyond that, the expert concentrates on what is coming, not on what is happening at the moment. With the very best athletes, the ego can recede completely into the background. Boris Becker reported that he was no longer conscious of what he was doing during the finals of the 1988 Master’s Tennis Tournament against Ivan Lendl. The racket had swung itself.
Then, directing our attention to the ego—among other things, we find the fear of being injured or being judged harshly by trainers and spectators. These fears have a negative effect on an athlete. They lead him or her to tense up, increasing susceptibility to injuries or mistakes—thus increasing vulnerability to the feared criticisms.
The practical significance of lucid dreaming for sports is that the athlete has no need to fear injury or the negative judgements of others in the lucid state. He/she can concentrate on the essential areas of the phenomenal field from the beginning.
The changing of the focus of attention can also promote the “growing together” of the athlete, equipment and terrain as well as the mutual empathy between the athlete and his partner or other living creatures.

6.4 The tendency towards good gestalt (pregnance). The last example shows that the previously-described organizational forms of the phenomenal total field can be separated from each other analytically, but remain closely connected to each other in reality. Finally, the general tendency towards good gestalt underlies all of the stated changes in organization. This tendency towards good gestalt means that the structure of the phenomenal field tends towards an organization that, with respect to motor performance, will always as “good” as the prevailing conditions allow. As stated above, given that the prevailing conditions are much less restricted by sensory processes during lucid dreaming than in the waking state, this tendency in lucid dreaming can be much more effective.
Physiologically, we assume that the improved organization of the phenomenal field corresponds to an improved dynamic coordination between the sensory and motor-related processes in the brain.

Thesis 7: By changing the personality structure, lucid dreaming can lead to improved performance and a higher level of creativity in sports.
When a person acts, the flexibility and creativity appropriate to the situation can be significantly limited by the inner constraints of the personality. This occurs when the subsystems of the personality lose their dynamic connection to each other, or even come into conflict with each other. According to gestalt theory, the ego seeks to protect itself (usually unconsciously) with various defense mechanism against the external compulsions and restraints of our cultural system. Ultimately this ends up producing an ego-centered personal outlook which, in contrast to a situation-oriented personal outlook, leads to a distortion of perception, thinking and feeling as well as to behavior inappropriate to a situation. In this context, by “ego” we mean a subsystem of the personality which seems to gradually dominate the entire personality by taking over the most diverse roles. The whole world thus becomes merely illusory and seems to revolve around the ego. What matters most is to “wake up” (cf. Tart, 1986) from this illusory world so that a person is ready to fulfill the requirements of the situation creative freedom, that is, without internal or external constraints. This requires a radical change from an ego-centered to a situation-centered personal outlook. In general, this transformation of the personality structure also leads to ongoing changes in the organization of the phenomenal field. These changes partially correspond to the previously discussed structural changes in the organization, but go beyond them because they lead to the recognition and solution of unconscious problems.
The evolution of consciousness is a way to creative freedom. I have described elsewhere (Tholey, 1990) how a person can achieve a situation-centered outlook through lucid dreaming. This path ultimately leads—by way of reconciliation with hostile dream characters (cf. Tholey, 1988)—to the symbolic death of the ego and to the rebirth of a higher Self which, in turn, leads to creative freedom in the most varied areas of activity—including sports.

References

Furrer, R. (1987). Raumerfahrung in der Schwerelosigkeit. Spektrum der Wissenschaft, 2, 48–49.

Gallwey, T. (1974). The inner game of tennis. New York: Random House.

Gallwey, T. (1981). Besser Skifahren durch “Innertraining.” München: Heyne.

Hartgenbusch (1927). Gestalt psychology in sport. Psyche, 27, 41–52.

Kohl, K. (1956). Zum Problem der Sensumotorik. Frankfurt am Main: Kramer.

Lewin, K. (1936). Principles of topological psychology. New York, London: McGraw-Hill.

Metzger, W. (1962). Schöpferische Freiheit. Frankfurt am Main: Kramer.

Nurbakhsch, H. (1987). Empirische Untersuchung zum Problem des Erlebens und Verhaltens im Motocross-Sport. Unpublished diploma thesis. Universität Braunschweig.

Solinski, S. 1983). Reiter, Reiten, Reiterei. Hildesheim: Olms.

Tart, C.T. (1988) Hellwach und bewusst leben. Bern, Munchen, Wien: Scherz- Verlag.

Tholey, P. (1981a). Empirische Untersuchungen über Klarträume. Gestalt Theory, 3, 21–62.

Tholey, P. (1981b). Erkenntnistheoretische und systemtheoretische Grundlagen der Sensu-motorik. Sportwissenschaft, 10, 7–35.

Tholey, P. (1983). Techniques for inducing and manipulating lucid dreams. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 57, 79–90.

Tholey, P. (1984a). Sensumotorisches Lernen als Organisation des psychischen Gesamt-feldes. In E. Hahn und H. Rieder (Eds.), Sensumotorisches Lernen und Sportspiel-forschung. Festschrift für Kurt Kohl (11–26). Köln: bps-Verlag.

Tholey, P. (1984b). Zur Gleichgewichtsproblematik im Sport. Sportpädagogik, 8(5), 13–15.

Tholey, P. (1986). Letter to the editor. Lucidity Letter, 5(2), 45–48.

Tholey, P. (1987a). Prinzipien des Lernens und Lehrens sportlicher Handlungen aus gestalt-theoretischer Sicht. In J.P. Janssen, W. Schlicht & H. Strang (Eds.), Bericht über die Tagung der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Sportpsychologie in Kiel 1986. Handlungskon-trolle und soziale Prozesse im Sport. Köln: 95–106.

Tholey, P. (1987b). Wahrnehmung und Vorstellung im Raum. Spektrum der Wissenschaft, 10, 5.

Tholey, P. (1988). A model for lucidity training as a means of self-healing and psychological growth. In

J. Gackenbach & S. P. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. New York, London: Plenum, 263–287.

Tholey, P. (1990). Unpublished manuscript. 21.

Tholey, P. & Utecht, K. (1987). Schöpferische Träumen: Der Klartraum als Lebenshilfe. Niedernhausen: Falken-Verlag.

White, P.A. & Murphy, M. (1987). Psi im Sport Der Einfluss übernatürlicher Wahrnehm-ungen auf sportliche Spitzenleistungen. München: Hugendubel.

##### VI.B.2 The Creative Process: Paintings Inspired from the Lucid Dream

FARIBA BOGZARAN

California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, California

Creative endeavors often arise from seemingly ordinary everyday experiences. In my own life, my art work received a considerable boost through an initial encounter with a lucid dream which I transformed into an occasion for self-expression. This type of self-expression, which I have explored more fully in the past few years, is highlighted in the following examples.

One noteworthy occasion of personal creativity owes its source of inspiration to a lucid dream, which I have titled, “Conscious Dreaming.”

August 18, 1981

I stand by the door in a gallery staring at a painting on the wall. It is my painting, however it looks unfamiliar to me. As I step forward to look at the detail of my work, I become aware that I am dreaming

The painting, approximately six by seven feet in size, displays an image of a wall destroyed in the middle but with the four corners still intact. An imprint of a triangle and circle are inside it. Inside the circle, a figure of a nude man and woman stand.

This image may be interpreted as the “symbolic alchemical concept of the squared circle, symbol of wholeness and the union of the opposites” (Jung, 1964). Besides many personal and interpersonal meanings that arose from the dream, the most important aspect was the inspiration to explore a new art style: a dream art.

Soon after that dream, I decided to explore the image that had appeared in a lucid dream. Instead, inexplicably, I started painting an image of a brain which contained different symbols that I had encountered in my nightly dreams for many years (Bogzaran, 1986. Also see Figure 1).

I will describe here only one of the many important personal insights I received as a result of the dream: the profound transformation of my painting style. I cite the dream as one important reason that I changed my style of painting from a predominantly realistic style to a surrealistic and abstract one. In effect, this transformation helped me with the teetering, hesitant approach to personal creativity which existed at the time. Once I followed this new path, however, my arrival in this new territory seemed very natural, as if my unexplored, hidden, creative side was now able to merge with other important aspects of my life.

One of these creative aspects, lucid dreaming, has become especially vibrant. I discovered that I now recognize the onset of lucidity by recalling the scenario of the above dream. Like the neuron which firesresponse to a neurotransmitter across a synapse, I successfully ignite lucidity each time I view a gallery, studio, or room with art work displayed.

As a result, in the past few years, I have experienced more than 45 dreams on this theme that triggered lucidity. The typical setting usually includes an art piece hanging on the wall or sculptures located in various patterns throughout the room. I usually try to stay calm once I become lucid so that I can experience the texture, colors and medium of the art work. The experience becomes ritualistic and sacred. I honor the gift of the art work by an deep inner appreciation. I spend some time with the creation by touching (if painting) or embracing (if sculpture), and feel myself merging with the piece.

Sometimes I focus on the art work to wake myself up. I call this technique “Intentional Focusing.” It helps me remember the art work so I can later create the actual piece. Sometimes, however, I cannot recreate the images because in the act of recreating them, I have lost the initial experience. In a way, it’s like trying to explain the unexplainable.

The curious yet significant personal challenge I face in working with these lucid dreams has been the variety of art media which I have begun to use. Sometimes I incubate a question before falling asleep. It is important for me to remember the question, because when I experience a lucid dream that features the image of an art piece, the art work can often provide insights which help me work with my incubation question.

To illustrate this approach, I cite the following practical example from a lucid dream I had when I was living in Canada. The incubation question was: “Should I go to California or stay in Canada for my graduate school work?”

October 13, 1985

Title: The Healing Hand

My husband and I are driving across Canada to go to California. In Alberta, on our way near Calgary, we encounter a gigantic ancient Greek building that resembles the Temple of Concord at Agrigento (West Doric hexastyle temple dated 430 B.C.).

We stop to look inside the building. People around the building look very pale and sick. Many homeless people sleep around the building. Inside, the building is dark and smelly. There is also a large door inside this building I walk close to the door; the room looks like a gallery. I suspect that I am dreaming, so I do a reality check. Soon I am convinced that I am dreaming because the walls start to change.

I walk into the room slowly, noticing a gigantic hand in the middle of the room. The hand must be ten feet tall. As I walk around the hand, my incubation question comes into my mind: “Should I go to California?”

Now I am standing in front of the hand on the palm of the hand a radiating light is glowing; I decide to walk inside the hand. The answer to the question seems obvious to me as I am walking into the hand. I feel a force pulling me inside the hand. (See Figure 2.)

I woke up feeling overwhelmed, content and joyful. I took the symbol as a positive sign that, yes, I must move to California! Later I decided to recreate the sculpture that I had dreamt. First I found a pyrite mineral stone that gave me the feeling of the inside of the hand. Later, I made the hand as a sculpture and painted it with the appropriate colors. I named it “The Healing Hand.” (One day I plan to create the hand in its actual size, producing a beautiful environment inside the hand so a person could actually walk inside it and enjoy its tranquility).

The dreams I have discussed here are just two examples of lucid dreams which relate to my studio/gallery perspective. While it is important for me to note that I have developed a strong association with studios and galleries as the catalyst which assists the onset of my lucidity, not all my lucid dreams occur in a gallery. The onset of lucidity also occurs many times when I am outdoors and almost every time I attempt to seek the Highest, God or the Unknown while lucid. In those situations, I have witnessed environmental changes moving from form to formlessness and have felt an incredible sensation in my body that is difficult to describe.

At times I enter a gallery in my dreams, but there are no paintings or art works in that space. At these moments, I stay mindful of the feelings of lucidity and remain unattached to whatever happens. Often the empty space I encounter reflects the silence, emptiness and formless nature of my inner being.

References

Bogzaran, F. (1986). The message from the inner world. Dream Network Bulletin, 5(1).

Jung, C. (1964). Man and his symbols. New York: Dell Publishing.

##### VI.B.3 Healing Through Lucid Dreaming

STEPHEN LABERGE

Stanford University, California

According to Jaffe and Bresler (1980), “Mental imagery mobilizes the latent, inner powers of the person, which have immense potential to aid in the promotion of health.” I believe this statement applies even more to lucid dreaming, a state that typically possesses the most vivid imagery possible. In the following, we will survey potential applications of lucid dreaming to healing.
In general terms, health is the ability of the human being to respond adaptively to the challenges of life (cf. Dubos, 1978). Adaptive responses mean viable responses: those that do not disrupt the integrity, i.e., wholeness or health of the person. This involves more than a mere homeostasis—if the life situation is really demanding, a healthy response will include personal growth and learning. Since these environmental challenges occur on all levels of the hierarchical organization of the person, from cellular to social, and I am speaking of the whole person’s responses, our concept of health is necessarily holistic. In these terms, maladaptive responses are unhealthy ones and healing refers to any processes correcting for the disrupted integrity of the person. In this case, any healthy response by definition leads to improved systemic integration, and hence is a healing process.

The Natural Healing Function of Sleep and Dreams

One of the major functions served by sleep and dreams is recuperation and adaptation. Sleep, as a time of relative isolation from environmental changes, allows the person to recover optimal health or, to repeat, the ability to respond adaptively.
The healing processes of sleep are, again, holistic, taking place on all levels of the system. On the higher levels (psychological and social), these self-regulatory functions are normally accomplished during dreams. We say “normally” because due to maladaptive mental attitudes and habits, dreams do not always accomplish their functions, as can be seen in the case of nightmares. Nightmares are not masochistic wish fulfillments, but rather the result of unhealthy reactions. The anxiety experienced in such dreams is, in fact, an indication of the failure of the process to function effectively.
Lucidity, allowing as it does flexibility and creative response, presents a means of resolving dream conflicts and hence fosters a return to effective self-regulation. This is the basis of approach to healing through lucid dreaming: to facilitate the person’s self-healing mechanisms by means of intentional imagery on the mental level.
The following dream illustrates the self-integrative potential of lucid dreams:
I am in the middle of a riot in the classroom. A furious mob is raging about throwing chairs and fighting. Most of them are Third World types and one of them has a hold on me—he is huge with a pockmarked face and repulsive. I realize that I’m dreaming and stop struggling. I find love in my heart and look him in the eyes, and, while holding his hands, speak to him in a loving way, trusting my intuition to supply the beautiful words of acceptance that flow out of me. As I do so, he melts into me; the riot has vanished, the dream fades, and I awaken feeling wonderfully calm and “together.”
That this is a healing dream is clear on several levels. First, the initial conflict, an unhealthy condition of stress, was resolved positively. Secondly, the dreamer reintegrated the ogre, a part of himself. Third, we have the direct evidence of the feeling of increased wholeness and well-being experienced upon awakening.
The use of dreams for healing was widespread in the ancient world. The sick would sleep in temples of healing, seeking dreams that would themselves cure or at least diagnose the illness and suggest a remedy. We mention dream “incubation” as a reminder that healing through lucid dreaming is a partly new and partly old idea.
Incidentally, the contrary of our thesis that positive dream imagery facilitates health, i.e., that negative imagery contributes to illness, has been hypothesized by Levitan (1980). He studied repetitive traumatic dreams in psychosomatic patients. These dreams typically involved injury to the body of the dreamer. Levitan suggested that “the repetitive experience of consummated trauma contributes to the malfunctioning of the physiological systems, and therefore, to the production of illness.”

Lucid Dreaming as Facilitator of Psychological Growth

Let us recall that growth is a healing response of the person to a life situation in which the person’s old patterns of behavior were inadequate and hence unhealthy. Persisting in these old patterns would perhaps result in disease; anything leading to the development of new, more viable patterns amounts to healing.
In this regard, Rossi (1972) has argued extensively for the notion that self-reflection (of which lucidity is the paradigm) plays a key role in psychological growth through dreams. Self-reflection evidently allows the dreamer to stand outside of his or her old patterns and thus to conceive new ones.
Moreover, the intentional self-integration illustrated by the lucid dream reported above shows the potential of lucid dreaming for psychosynthesis. Psychological growth often requires the reintegration of neglected or rejected aspects of the person which can be deliberately achieved through the symbolic encounters of lucid dreaming. There are many alternatives to the process of assimilation and reintegration. For instance, here is an example of symbolic transformation:
. . . Having returned from a journey, I am carrying a bundle of bedding and clothes down the street when a taxi pulls up and blocks my way. Two men in the taxi and one outside it are threatening me with robbery and violence Somehow I realize that I’m dreaming and at this I attack the three muggers, heaping them in a formless pile and setting fire to them. Then out of the ashes I arrange for flowers to grow. My body is filled with vibrant energy as I awaken.
That this was a healing dream is evidenced by the increased feeling of well-being experienced when the dreamer awoke. What evidence do we have to suggest that dreaming in the manner illustrated by the examples leads to any lasting benefit?
The experience of realizing with (partial) relief that a nightmare is “just a dream” (and usually awakening) seems to be very widespread. LaBerge (1980a) reported that anxiety appeared to lead to lucidity in 36% of his first year’s lucid dreams (60% during the first six months). In contrast, anxiety was present when he recognized that he was dreaming in only about 5% of his lucid dreams during the third year of his study. It seems likely that the decrease in the number and proportion of anxiety dreams was due to his practice of resolving conflicts during lucid dreams, as illustrated. Moreover, he seems to havelearned to recognize any dream with sufficient anxiety to be a dream since he no longer awakens from anxiety dreams without first becoming lucid and thereby having the opportunity to resolve the dream conflict.
This is a very important potential of lucid dreaming, for when we “escape” from a nightmare by awakening, we have merely repressed our awareness of it, and are left with an unresolved conflict, as well as, in all likelihood, negative and unhealthy affect. Staying with the nightmare, on the other hand, allows us to lucidly resolve the problem in a fashion that leaves the person more healthy than before. Healing was the original intent of the dream; lucidity merely facilitated the process.

Therapeutic Uses of Imagery

Imagery is used in a great variety of psychotherapeutic approaches ranging from psychoanalysis to behavior modification (Singer & Pope, 1979; Watkins, 1976). Rather than exhaustively reviewing these uses, we will focus on two examples after reiterating the point that lucid dreaming is the most vivid form of imagery available to normal persons. Since the efficacy of imagery seems to be dependent upon its status of “as-if” reality, we can expect the experienced reality of lucid dream healing imagery to be particularly effective.
One of the most intriguing applications of imagery to therapy is Simonton’s work with cancer patients. Simonton et al. (1980) report that patients supplementing standard treatment for advanced cancer with healing imagery survived, on the average, twice as long as expected by national averages. Given the special connection between mind and body observed by us (see LaBerge et al., 1981) and the high level of experienced participation in lucid dreams, it seems reasonable to expect that healing imagery during lucid dreaming might be even more effective.
The other imagery technique we wish to discuss is hypnosis. Deep-trance hypnotic subjects are able to exert remarkable control over many physiological functions. For example, deep trance subjects can inhibit allergic reactions, stop bleeding, and experience anćsthesia at will (Bowers, 1976).
Unfortunately, these dramatic responses are limited to the 5–10% of the population who are capable of entering hypnosis most deeply. Moreover, this deep-trance ability does not seem to be trainable. Lucid dreaming, on the other hand, may be learnable (LaBerge, 1980b), and may hold the same potentials for self-regulation as deep-trance hypnosis, yet be applicable to a much greater proportion of the population. In this regard, it should be noted that a majority of persons with substantial dream recall report having had spontaneous lucid dreams (LaBerge, 1980a).

Voluntary Control of REM Sleep Physiology

The fact that a correlation has been found between dream behavior and physiological responses (see LaBerge et al., 1981) presents an unusual opportunity for self-regulation. Lucid dreams can carry out dream actions designed to have desirable physiological consequences. In general, a person can only learn to consciously control a physiological parameter (e.g. heart rate, alpha rhythm, etc.) within the normal range of variation for a given state of consciousness. Since REM sleep presents the widest range of variation of physiological parameters, it also presents the greatest control possibilities. One of the most intriguing questions is the long-term effect of dream self-control. One of the functions suggested for REM sleep is the determination of physiological reference levels for motivational behavior. Will, for instance, lowered blood pressure during lucid dreaming result in real lowered blood pressure?
Imagining the patient in a state of perfect health is a technique commonly used by paranormal healers.
Since while dreaming we generate body images in the form of our dream bodies, we ought to be able to initiate self-healing processes by consciously experiencing our dream bodies as perfectly healthy. Furthermore, if our dream bodies do not at first appear perfectly healthy, we can “magically” heal them through the control that lucidity brings (LaBerge, 1980a); phenomenologically, we know these things can be done. The question for future research to answer is, “If we heal the dream body, to what extent will we also heal the physical body?”

References

Bowers, K.S. (1976). Hypnosis for the seriously curious. Monterey, California: Brooks/Cole.

Dubos, R. (1978). Health and creative adaptation. Human Nature, 1, 74.

Jaffe, D.T. & Bresler, D.E. (1980). The use of guided imagery as an adjunct to medical diagnosis and treatment. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 20, 45.

LaBerge, S.P. (1980a). Lucid dreaming: An exploratory study of consciousness during sleep. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University.

LaBerge, S.P. (1980b). Lucid dreaming as a learnable skill: A case study. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 51, 1039.

LaBerge, S.P., Nagel, L.E., Dement, W.C. & Zarcone, V.P. (1981). Lucid dreaming verified by volitional communication during REM sleep. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 52, 727–732.

Levitan, H.L. (1980). Traumatic events in dreams of psychosomatic patients. Psychother. Psychosom., 33, 226.

Rossi, E.L. (1972). Dream and the growth of personality. New York: Pergamon.

Simonton, O.C., Mathews-Simonton, S., & Sparks, T.F. (1980). Psychological intervention in the treatment of cancer. Psychosomatics, 21, 226.

Singer, J.L., & Pope, K.S. (1978). The power of human imagination. New York: Plenum.

Watkins, M.M. (1976). Waking dreams. New York: Harper & Row.

##### VI.B.4 A Personal Experience in Lucid Dream Healing

E.W. KELLOGG, III

The Aletheia Foundation, Ashland, Oregon

First, let me describe my own qualifications and orientation in dreamwork. I normally recall three to five dreams per night, and have over the past decade or so written down and then fairly comprehensively indexed over 5,000 of my dreams. Of these dreams I have had several hundred that I characterize as fully lucid, meaning that within the dream I had at least the same degree of consciousness and free will (the ability to make conscious decisions) as in my physical reality waking state. During these experiences I have applied many of the standard tests for “realness” that one can apply to the physical world (from pinching myself, saying my name out loud, checking my dream body sensations, self-remembering, checking for consensus with other dream persons, etc.) and in each case dream reality has passed the tests. Of course, dream reality compared to physical reality has many profoundly different attributes, and I do not in any way wish to make light of those differences. But from a phenomenological point of view, which bases itself in experience rather than in theories about experience, I have found no basis other than prejudice for assigning any less “realness” to the lifeworld of my lucid dream state than to that of my awake physical state.
In general, I enjoy excellent health based on a number of common sense and mind-body practices. As a result, I’ve had very little opportunity to try the effect of healing in a lucid dream on myself. However, on Monday, April 9, 1984 I over-enthusiastically ate a Japanese style fish shish-kebab, and punctured my right tonsil with a wooden skewer. By Thursday my tonsil had grown quite horribly infected and swollen, looking about three times normal size, bright red, and with yellow lines of pus decorating the exterior. Aside from upping my dosage of Vitamin C, and a few cursory attempts at visualization, I had done nothing to treat it. On Thursday night my tonsil felt very painful, and I used a sensory awareness relaxation technique to take my mind off the pain to get to sleep. I had used this technique before (which involves a pattern of body sensing) to induce OBEs, and had the idea of attempting healing in the OB state, operating on the “as above so below” principle. I then had the following lucid dream (not an OBE, which I experience as something quite different):
. . . walking through a house I wake to the Lucid Dream State, decide to try healing my throat. I look in a mirror and my throat looks healthy, but the tonsils look more like the middle section (uvula) then like tonsils. So in my dream body my throat looks healthy, but different. I program for healing to occur (using affirmations), and my throat does feel much better on awakening.
Subjectively, I would estimate that less than an hour had passed between sleeping and waking, and the pain had almost entirely disappeared. The next morning my right tonsil looked and felt almost normal, only slightly red and swollen. At least 95% of the infection had disappeared in less than 12 hours. From the dramatic reduction in pain felt right after the healing experience, I suspect that much of this healing took place during the lucid dream itself, although of course the dream could have triggered a largerelease of endorphins.
The potential limits of lucid dream healing may correlate somewhat to those seen in the placebo effect or in deep hypnosis. However, I would like to point out that the physiological change-of-state documented in multiple personality cases may prove applicable to what one might expect to see in dream healing phenomena. All of us seem to experience “multiple personalities” in our dreams. Perhaps clinically defined “multiple personalities” have simply transplanted a dream state phenomenon over to the waking state as well. Although sharing the same body, different personalities often have different allergies, accelerated healing rates, and eyeglass prescriptions. Dr. Bennett Braun reported on the case of one woman who has diabetes in one personality but not in another (see the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 26(2), October, 1983 for a whole issue devoted to this subject).
These dramatic changes can take place within minutes, and point to the dramatic and accelerated healing effects potentially available to all of us, through mental changes-of-state leading to physiological changes-of-state.
One final note: lucid dream healing involves mental certainty of a change-of-state not usually available in other self-healing modes such as visualization therapies. I did not imagine that I had healed my tonsil, I experienced a healthy tonsil. Unlike multiple personality patients, most of us cannot change our mental state to bring about a body change-of-state without a considerable amount of doubt intervening and weakening the process. In my lucid dream experience such doubt did not appear, and this could have made all the difference to the effectiveness of the healing obtained.

# News and Notes

Letters To The Editor; Book Reviews

As the size of this special, commemorative issue was already well beyond the usual Lucidity Letter/Lucidity annual guidelines, the decision was made not to include current Letters to the Editor or Book Reviews sections this year. Our new annual format will have plenty of space to catch up on these in the 1992 issue. Among the books that will be reviewed at that time will be Dream Images: A Call To Mental Arms, by Jayne Gackenbach and Annette Sheikh; Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, by Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold; and a soon-to-be-released book on Christ-encounters and encounters with the Light (in waking as well as dreaming states) by G. Scott Sparrow and Mark Thurston.

A cumulative index of all Lucidity Letter and Lucidity articles will be published in the 1992 issue. Our usual bibliographical update follows; a cumulative bibliography is tentatively scheduled for 1993.

Bibliographic Updates

Gackenbach, J.I. (1991). A developmental model of consciousness in sleep: From sleep consciousness. In J.I. Gackenbach and A.A. Sheikh (Eds.), Dream images: A call to mental arms. Farmington, New York: Baywood.

Gillespie, G. (1991). Early Hindu speculation about dreams: Implications for dream yoga. In J.I. Gackenbach and A.A. Sheikh (Eds.), Dream images: A call to mental arms. Farmington, New York: Baywood.

Hunt, Harry T. (1991). Lucid dreaming as a meditative state: Some evidence from long term meditators in relation to the cognitive psychological bases of transpersonal phenomena. In J.I. Gackenbach and A.A. Sheikh (Eds.), Dream images: A call to mental arms. Farmington, New York: Baywood.

Kellogg III, E.W. (1986). A lucid dream incubation technique. Dream Network Bulletin, 5(4), 16.

LaBerge, S. (1989). The spinning technique. Oniros, EE4, 11.

LaBerge, S. and Rheingold, H. (1991). Exploring the world of lucid dreaming. New York: Ballantine Books.

Snyder, T.J., and Gackenbach, J. (1991). Vestibular involvement in the neurocognition of lucid dreaming. In J.I. Gackenbach and A.A. Sheikh (Eds.), Dream images: A call to mental arms. Farmington, New York: Baywood.

Stewart, D.W. and Koulack, D. (1991). A rating system for lucid dream content. In K.S. Pope and J.L. Singer (Eds.), Imagination, cognition and personality: Consciousness in theory, research, clinical practice. Farmington, New York: Baywood.