Is Lucid Dreaming Real?
Lucid dreaming is a real, verifiable phenomenon. It is not paranormal and it is not a disputed event (in that it occurs) among scientists who study sleep and dreaming. This was not the case even a few decades ago. Plenty of smart folk gave smart-sounding reasons for why lucid dreaming was impossible: "Dream imagery arises from sub/un-conscious sources and cannot be experienced with waking-like consciousness, much less controlled," and "people who think they had a lucid dreaming were merely in-between waking and sleeping, but they were basically awake." Actually, this second paraphrased reasoning isn't so far off, if you invert "in-between waking and sleeping" to "lucid dreaming is a conscious* state which exhibits characteristics of BOTH waking and dream-cognition."
*Above, I said that dreaming is a form of "consciousness." Non-lucid dreams are not "unconscious" events. That is, if you recall them and/or were aware of something happening while the dream was going on. If we were "unconscious" during dreams, we would not remember them. Things that you remember which did not actually occur are fabrications, and either everyone is lying about having the same few dreams or, much less likely, we are all being lied to by our fake-dream-memory-system. OR, dreams happen more or less along the lines of how we recall them, especially when we have been paying attention to them for years. With that said, it is not correct to call lucid dreams "conscious dreams" and regular dreams "unconscious." And just because you are aware of things happening in a dream, that does not mean that you know you are inside of a dream. So, are us lucid dreamers lying or fooling ourselves? No. If you don't already know the story, here goes: Within a few years of each other and on separate continents, Dr' Stephen LaBerge and Keith Hearne tested the hypothesis that lucid dreaming could be verified in real time by signalling a pre-agreed upon set of eye signals (measured by face sensors) once they became lucid in a dream. That the dreamer was actually asleep could be attested to through skin conductance meters and EEG waves over areas of the skull indicative of sleep (for instance, the primary visual cortex is "asleep" during sleep, even during dreaming). Since the eye-muscles are not paralyzed during sleep as are the main skeletal muscles (to prevent acting-out dream movements), the eyes can be controlled via volitional effort. As predicted, the dreamers were able to signal once lucidity was attained, and history was made. In the years since, this paradigm has been duplicated many times in over in dozens of labs. Of course, the best way to prove a thing to yourself is to experience it first-hand. You can meditate for years and never levitate one millimeter off of the floor. You can lucid dream tonight and fly past the stars (not the physical stars, but they may appear just as impressive). |