I used to dream lucidly all the time, without any special effort–at the time I didn’t know there was anything to it. Loads of fun; I would fly around and change aspects of dreams I didn’t like. Now that I know all the cool stuff you can do with lucid dreaming if you know what you’re doing, I wish I could bring it back. It doesn’t really get me down or anything; I’m sure it’ll happen again someday. If not, oh well.
I agree with PaulFitzroy that the brain must record all states of mind experienced, because I’ve been honest-to-God stoned, drunk and popped on DXM without benefit of actual drug ingestion in dreams. When this happens, I usually wake up and still feel the effects of the drug for 20 minutes. I was prepared for this with weed, because sometimes if you smoke right before bed you’ll still be a little high in the morning. So being high when I woke up wasn’t a new thing. But I really wasn’t ready for being drunk in the morning. That was odd.
As far as the lightswitch thing goes, in the research I did on lucid dreaming last year I found that that was an extremely common theme (nonworking light-switches, that is). One of the sites I read literally proclaimed that “lightswitches never work in dreams, ever” and suggested flicking the light switch as a foolproof reality check.
Actually, the reason it’s supposed to work for inducing lucidity is because the light can be on and the lightswitch won’t turn it off. There is no logical explanation for this in the real world, unless you know your house has faulty wiring or somesuch.
Of course, your mind could trick you into still thinking you’re dreaming, by convincing you that your house does have faulty wiring. IANAneurologist/psychologist/otherwise-qualified-professional, but I’m not sure if minds in dream-state can comprehend that sort of thing. It probably varies from person to person; I imagine that an electrical engineer might be so well-versed in home wiring systems on an academic level that his/her brain knows the basics on an almost instinctual level. For most of us, though, I would imagine that the furthest we could get without invoking some waking-life brainpower is probably something among the lines of “light switches are supposed to turn lights off; although this thing appears to be a switch, it must not be a switch because it cannot turn off a light; ergo, things are not as they seem”.
Yup, I used to be just like this. I was truly surprised to hear that it was unique that I could control my dreams and that I always knew I was dreaming. Dreams were dreams because they were dreams, and that was it; there was no confusion to be had, in my mind. Some time in middle or early high school I stopped dreaming lucidly, and although there have been times that I thought it’d be cool to have a lucid dream again, I don’t mind this new way at all. I didn’t really even notice the difference; seemed perfectly natural to me. Also, now that I’m used to it, it seems like it’s a good thing for me because dream time is a time where I can relax and just let what happens happen; this reflects a similar change in my attitude towards life, from trying to control everything and getting all worked up when I couldn’t, to just letting things flow and taking life as it comes. (Perhaps that’s why I switched to nonlucid dreaming, actually; the change in my attitude in waking life may have subconsciously induced a change in my dreaming life.)
From my experience with this and what I’ve heard from everyone else (“Most people don’t dream in color? That’s weird, I’ve always dreamed in color.”) it must not be true or must manifest itself differently. I would ask this: How was it originally determined that most people don’t dream in color? If it was anything other than subjective waking-life commentary (“I dream in black and white”), perhaps it’s the reality that we don’t have color in our dreams but, looking back on them in waking life, we don’t realize it. Or perhaps color (or “black and white”) means something different in the dream world. Either way, I can’t accept “most people don’t dream in color” at face value, because whenever I hear this I see everyone responding: “What?! That’s so weird! I dream in color!”
Mmm, my mind seems to be able to comprehend it… if I flicked a switch and it didn’t work, I’de immediately think “Oh, must be something wrong with the bulb.” No way would I think it was weird or something. In real life, I’m a very logical person so that is probably why I try to think everything out so rationally.
Same here, with dreams, I know that I can take several paths in the dream, but I like to see what happens when I just go with the flow, dreaming like that feels really effortless and flowy to me. I really want to lucid dream again but I guess subconsciously my brain doesn’t want to jump over that big barrier of lucidity. Other than that, I love lucid dreaming.
Also, does tiredness affect lucid dreaming at all?
I think it came about as a statistic. I’ve also read some study (oh, so long ago that I porbably coldn’t find a cite for it on line) which also found that a lot of people said the dream had been in colour, but washed out – like an old film reel, just not as vibrant.
I confess I have experience the later, but usually it’s super saturated.
IIRC, it kind fo goes hand in hand with the nubmer of people who report “I don’t dream” when in fact they do, theyare just incapable of recollecting it at all, and others who report that they dream for forget everything about it within seconds of waking.
<wild speculation>
So maybe there’s some kind of statistical crossover: When you remember your dream you’re also more likely to have dreamt in colour. Like maybe if the whole dream is more realistic (colour, tactile stuff, smells) your brain gets tricked into thinking it’s real so you remember more and therefore remember it had colour and all the elements of realism.
</speculation>
Neato. Looked up a more recent study. Apparently, newer research indicates we dream in colour 75%-83% of the time. Previous studies had it as low as only 25%-30%.
BUT the more recent studies say that it is more likely an issue of recall.
So when we are more conscious of the dream state (like lucid dreaming) we’re more likley to recall there were colours. Whereas if the memory recall is too vague we can’t so they are rememberd as “colourless”.