It sounds probable to me, yet every source that I can find on the subject mentions crap about chakras and thrid eyes and self-actualiztion, basically a bunch of stuff that I don’t believe in. So is lucid dreaming possible? And are there real studies on the phenomenon that aren’t full of new age mumbo-jumbo? Also if it is for real how can I achieve it? Thanks.
We have covered lucid dreaming many times here. There are several dopers that can do it and it is real in some sense. I do it myself spontaneously from time to time. It just enables you to exert control on a dream which is fun and satisfying although I don’t know how mystical it is.
Here’s the Straight Dope:
I’m reliably informed that it can be done, but it’s not easy. I think that those who can do it just have a certain knack or talent for it.
Well, I’m not sure what exactly this whole new age bent on it is, but lucid dreaming itself is absolutely real. It simply means becoming aware that you’re dreaming while still fully asleep and in a dream state.
Stephen LeBarge was the best known authority on it while I was actively interested in it, some 15 years ago. Not sure if that’s still the case, but his book(s) outline a number of techniques on how to do it (e.g. get into the habit of asking yourself if you are dreaming throughout your waking day, and test it by reading something, looking away, and coming back to it to see if it changed. In a dream it typically will. There are others I’m sure some posters will come in to tell you about.)
None of his techniques ever really worked consistantly for me. I just found that, while the whole phenomenon was on my mind, I was more likely to become lucid in a dream. It’s really cool and a lot of fun, but I don’t think it has any real usefulness beyond that.
Incidentally, one way that I’ve never gotten around to trying, but that I’m sure would work, would be to record your voice (or anyone’s) just whisper something like “this is a dream” or some hint, and have it play throughout the night seperated by 30-45 minutes of silence. It should be at a very low volume so that you could barely hear it while awake. I used to go to sleep with music albums repeating throughout the night, and well, let’s just say I’ve been to many concerts and performed on stage with many bands without ever leaving my bed. 
I’ll grant that it may be possible, but it has always sounded like voodoo to me because the surest way for me to wake up from a dream is have even a glimmer of the thought “I’m dreaming” cross my mind. I’d have an easier time romancing Abe Vigoda than simultaneously dreaming and knowing that I was dreaming.
If that’s what ‘lucid dreaming’ means, then I can answer the OP’s question of whether it’s possible: Yes. I’ve done it many times. Don’t ask me how or why, but I’d say I’ve done it a few dozen times in my life. It usually happens when I’m having a very bad dream and, on occasion, I can ‘talk’ to myself in the dream and realize that, yes, this is just a dream and the threat or fear I’m experiencing is not real. It’s almost as if I’m two different people at the same time. It’s weird, I know.
I was able to lucid dream once. I was in a car, in the passenger seat. I realized at some point that I was dreaming, and got very excited because I had read about lucid dreaming. So I started trying to do stuff…I drove the car with my mind, made things hover above the dashboard…but then I tried to get too tricky…I wanted to fly, so I made myself hover above the seat, while driving the car. This was too much ( thought it was very cool and became a bit too aware), and I immediately woke up…I was mad.
I used to be really interested in this as a teenager. I was quite determined to have one and have had several throughout my life. Have you ever had a dream where you actually realize it’s a dream and choose to wake yourself? I’ve done this since I was a kid, and it’s somewhat on the way to lucid dreaming.
Now there is a bunch of mystical (crap if I say so) about chakra’s third eyes, etc. That’s nonsense. The science behind it makes sense. It is possible to be conscious (To the extent you can while dreaming) and still in a dream. It’s difficult to maintain lucidity though. Remember you are still asleep. I’d liken it to the half-awake half-asleep state that most people are familiar with.
The strangest thing about lucid dreaming is the way that dreams are so transient. Do you know that state of mind while falling asleep where you are going back and forth and thinking of random thoughts. In dreams, when you are relatively conscious you can actually notice this. One thing is trying to read something in a dream. Text makes no sense in dreams. Yet, due to the fact that it is your brain producing all of this gibberish, you seem to understand it. At least it doesn’t seem so much like gibberish.
One of the most reliable ways to determine if you’re dreaming would be to try to use some kind of machinery. It invaribly never works in dreams if you mean to test whether it is a dream or not. Look at a clock, and then look away. Look at it again and it will be a different time, only you’ll be vaguely aware of it, not like in real life. If you become too conscious you actually wake up!
I’ve always tried to fly, yet I always find that when I’m lucid enough to control things, my dreams begin to fade. It’s this sort of paradox with which you have to work. Also I think all of these mental devices are only as good as they get into your subconscious. If you spend hours reading about lucid dreaming you’re more likely to due to the fact that you spend a lot of time with it. It’s natural that it will affect your dreams.
In my opinion, lucidity is only a question of your enthusiasm for it. If you’re aware of it you might be able to do it a few times, otherwise you’ll probably not care.
And that’s the thing, when you’re dreaming, sometimes you don’t care to be lucid! Not that it’s a conscious choice but it’s a difficult thing to describe. I think most people have an idea of what it is like to be slightly conscious during REM sleep but on the other hand it’s kind of hard to get it to work in your favor.
One of my most vivid lucid dreams (and vivid lucid dreams are hard for me to come by) was when I fell asleep one night with my lights on. Suddenly the lights became the sun and I was looking around a sunny field. I feel that if I were to cultivate this a bit more I could get a bit better, but I’m not very introspective to begin with and I feel that is what it takes a great deal of to enjoy it.
You have to enjoy exploring your self-conscious to begin with.
To add on edit: Stephen LeBarge and the Lucidity Institute definitely take an all-science approach to it. There’s no ridiculous third-eye stuff going on at all.
And that’s exactly why I want to be able to achieve lucid dreaming - to romance Abe Vigoda!
From personal experience, it’s a real phenomenon. Back in my sillier days, I experimented with DMAE – the only effect from taking it that I noticed was a big increase in dream recollection and lucid dreaming. I’ve had lucid dreams outside that period, too, but much less frequently. Coincidentally, I had one just last week for the first time in years.
I’ve never actively exerted control in any of them, though, so maybe they don’t count as lucid. Usually, it’s just an awareness that I’m dreaming, and watching the thing progress like a really, really, strange movie involving myself.
To ask a purely prurient question, how does lucid dreaming work for sex fantasies? Could I nail Jessica Alba if I wanted to? Have any of the lucid dreamers here tried anything like that?
According to this Blackmore article I just found at least one person has been shown to be able to control her sex life in lucid dreams.
Lucid dreams happen.
I used to have some pretty cool dreams up until about 8-years ago. Then, for some reason, they stopped and so now days I just have dull, crummy dreams.
The link that was provided mentions Dr. Steven LeBerge who was (and I think still is) at Stanford University doing drean research. He’s been doing great research on it for many years. And you can (or at least could) buy a whole program from his outfit that will get you on your way to lucid dreaming. I bought one myself years ago for a couple of hundred $$ because I wasn’t having them often enough, but because I’ve always been a lazy, lazy guy unable to accomplish much and focus, I just paged through the written materials and tried for a couple of nights the electronic eye mask device that comes with it and then put it away.
There’s one small little matter that I kinda have to say regarding what some others have posted to your thread. And that is, while it’s true that technically one is lucid dreaming when one knows one is sleeping, there is a HUGE difference between those kind of lucid dreams and ones that are “full-blown.”
I had a couple of those but am too lazy to lay the details out, but will at least say that they were some of the most beautiful mystical experiences I’ve ever had in my life. If you can actually find the fortitude and take advantage of what LeBerg’s program offers and do it to the point that you experience the kind of full-blown lucid dreams I’m talking about, you’ll be one of the happiest people on the earth!
There’s nothing like (full-blown) lucid dreams.
I have done this, and I’ll be the first to tell you, she wasn’t that good
I’ve been lucid dreaming consistently from about the age of 13. When I was a kid I’d have these terrible re-occuring night terrors… to the point where I was afraid of going to sleep… I developed this process, I would read untill I couldn’t stay awake any longer then I would close my eyes and imagine I was still reading in an imaginary library. It’s always the same library every time. There’s no doors into the library, just four walls overed in floor to ceiling bookshelves, so nothing can get in. I concentrate on staying in my library as long as I can. I imagine I’m ‘reading’ stories that I’d like to be in… and usually it seamlessly transitions into dreaming about whatever I want… if it takes a bad turn I always think “That’s ok, I’m really just in my library.”… and I can go back there… my library fantasy is a sort of half/dream state I flow in and out of… and yeah, sometimes the dreams are sexual.
When I first read about lucid dreaming, I was shocked. How could anyone not know that they were in a dream? The shape of buildings, for instance, never match their actual shape in my dreams. I don’t feel the pull of gravity in a dream or feel sunlight or breezes on my skin. Conversations are truncated.
I don’t always have complete control, but I almost always know it’s a dream. I can float, fly, teleport and rewind the dream multiple times if I don’t like the way it’s turning out. I can count on one hand the number of dreams that I remember where I didn’t know what was about to happen before it happened. I only remember once that I didn’t realize I was dreaming while it was going on.
I’m not doing anything with chakras that I know of. I’d suggest practicing at daydreaming, if you want to go lucid. Especially daydreaming as you fall asleep. And do whatever you need to do to rember your dreams. It doesn’t much matter if they’re lucid if you can’t remember them.
I always remember dreams I wake up out of the best. The ones interrupted by the alarm. Can you wake up when you want to without an alarm? If so, set yourself to wake during the end of the last dream.
I have occasional lucid dreams; re: Yllaria’s point, I have a HUGE amount of detail in my dreams. Dozens of people around, doing their own thing, talking, all looking different. Scents. Textures. All correct. (Then again I have mild/moderate Tourette’s and I am big into physical experience of the world) So it isn’t so odd that at least some people don’t have the ability to reason lucidity (minus the whole “reasoning center of brain is usually not activated”).
Most embarrassing lucid dream: monster from the sea killing people in seaside town, blah blah, only escape was to the mountains on the other side which were dangerous too for some reason, and I say to a few of the survivors on the trek that “Gosh, this is just awful” and one of the people shrugs, and says “It’s just your dream, don’t worry about it.” I didn’t believe him until I woke up though!
While I have the ability to erase things that have happened in the dream I didn’t like, or rewind to make a different choice, or just place myself in an entirely new dream and de-lucidize myself, I can’t ever fly, or hover, or anything like that.
I’ve actually had success in getting my mother and a friend of mine to go from no lucid dreams ever to the occasional if not even regular one, by doing the “Ask yourself if you’re awake, and try to ‘feel’ the sensations that lead you to know you are awake” method. Both did this many times every day, and eventually had it ingrained enough that they did it while asleep and noted that no, this was a different sensation. They both separately said it was the questioning and analysis that made them realize they were dreaming, not noting some flaw in physics or something, or doing the “read things multiple times” trick. Certainly easier than experimenting with drugs or spending lots of money on books and stuff, heh.
When I was little I lucid dreamed a lot, and had a “double blink” method to wake myself up, where I would in the dream close my eyes, then try to open a “set of eyelids behind my eyelids,” which were the real ones. Weird, but worked at least. Usually. Once it didn’t, and I got actually stuck in a lucid dream, unable to wake myself up. I was just 6 or 7, and was afraid I had gone into a coma or something and I would be stuck in the er…Teddy Graham Rave forever. (Worse was another character in the dream claimed to also be stuck in that dream with me, and had been stuck for months…that was one awful dream.)
Question: Is it just me that when I lucid dream, and choose to read things multiple times, the words stay the same? Or perhaps I’m not waiting enough time between readings?
I’ve never experimented with lucid dreaming, but I’ve definitely had the occasional experience of realizing I’m dreaming without waking up. The most memorable instance was way back when I was about 6 years old. I was at school, walking in line with the rest of my class, when I noticed a hallway that I was sure hadn’t been there the day before. At that point I knew it had to be a dream.
I spent the rest of the dream arguing with my teacher that it wasn’t fair to make me go to class, seeing as how it was really the middle of the night.
Clarification -
I just assumed that everyone has experienced a dream in which they know they are dreaming, I certainly have, but that’s not really what I’m after in regards to lucid dreaming. What I want is not only to be aware I’m in a dream but to be able to take control over my actions and feel more “awake” during the dream state. We’ve all had dreams that we know are dreams while they happen, but we behave like the automatons in Vonnegut’s Timequake. What most of us don’t experience in our dreams though is “free will”. In my dreams I want to really be John Malkovich, not just Craig looking out through his eyes.